Ginny Weasley and the Chamber of Secrets
by mosylu
Summary: Horrible brothers, unrequited love, and leaving home for the first timewhat else could possibly go wrong? Ginny Weasley is about to find out. FINISHED
1. The Visitor

_Thump._

Ginny Weasley opened her eyes and blinked into the darkness. That ghoul again . . . she bet it was _awful _in Ron's room--he was right under it.

She put the pillow over her head. Ruddy ghoul . . . 

_Thump._

She took the pillow off her head again. _That_ hadn't come from the attic.

Since she was awake, she reached for her wrapper and crept out into the hall. There was a third muffled thump from downstairs.

When she got to the kitchen, it was empty, and Mum's clock said, "Should be asleep". At first she wondered if it had been the ghoul after all--but somebody had kicked aside the twins' wellies, which had been sitting in front of the door when she'd gone to bed. Her eyes narrowed.

She went out onto the front porch and stared around the yard. It was deserted--but only for a moment. The shed door creaked open, and slowly, the old Muggle car that Ginny's dad had brought home to tinker with wheeled out into the yard.

Not under its own power either, she saw. Ron and George were pushing at the back, huffing and puffing, as Fred sat in the front seat, steering. They were facing away and didn't see her. 

She pulled her wrapper tighter around herself and went down the steps into the yard. "Where're you going with Dad's car?" she whispered.

Ron and George gave simultaneous yells of fright and whipped round. "Ginny!" Ron hissed. "What are you doing up?"

She crossed her arms. "You three were thumping and bumping all over the place--you didn't think anyone _slept_ through that, did you?"

Both her brothers--all three, Fred was now hanging out the window--gave their parents' window swift glances. But it remained dark, and they relaxed. "Go back to bed, Ginny-Ginny-wee-one," George whispered, tugging the braid that hung over her shoulder. "You shouldn't be up."

"Neither should you," she retorted, yanking her braid out of his grasp. "And don't _call _me that. Where're you going?"

"None of your business, Miss Nosy," Ron told her.

Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, Ron, look, isn't that a great hairy _spider_ on your arm?"

He gave his second terrified yelp of the night and slapped at his arm. When he discovered no spider, he gave her a dirty look and pointedly climbed into the car.

Fred, still hanging out of the driver's-side window, said, "We're going to get Harry, Ginny-Ginny-wee-one. He hasn't written back at all."

Ginny's mouth fell open, and for once she let the baby name slide. "Can I come too?" she begged, grabbing onto the side of the car as if she would physically keep it from leaving. "Can I?" 

"Don't be daft, you're in your wrapper," George said from the other half of the front seat.

"I can change!"

"There's not enough room," Ron snarled, obviously still angry about the nonexistent spider.

"There is _too_, I watched Dad put all that extra space in--"

"Sorry, Gin, he's right," Fred said. "We've got to get Harry and all his things and his owl in here. Unless you want to ride on the roof, there won't be nearly enough room." He turned the car on and started it rolling forward. 

Ginny held on, trotting to keep up. "I don't take up much space--"

"Huh!" Ron opined.

George leaned over Fred. "Ginny, let go, do. We've got to leave _now _or we won't be back by dawn."

Finally, reluctantly, she let go. As the car rose off the ground, Ron stuck his head out the window. "And don't you go blabbing to Mum, Miss Loose-Lips, or I'll put snakes in your bed!"

"You do and I'll put a spiders' nest in your Hogwarts trunk!" Ginny hissed back.

Fred's arm appeared, waving to her, and the car sailed off into the night.

Scowling ferociously, she stomped back to the porch and sat down with a thump, putting her chin in her hands and resting her elbows on her knees. She never got to do anything fun. Ron and Fred and George got to go flying off to save Harry Potter from his nasty relatives and she had to--had to--

She made a strangled squeaking noise as something dawned on her.

_Harry Potter was coming to the Burrow._

He was going to come _here_--to her _home_--and he might be _staying_ here until the beginning of the school year--in the same _house_ with her, Ginny--

She made another squeaking sound and clapped her chilled fingers to her burning cheeks.

Her fascination with Harry Potter was a long-standing one. From the first story she'd ever heard of his defeat of You-Know-Who, as a very small child, he'd figured as a knight in shining armor in her fertile imagination, bravely facing down a fire-breathing dragon that had terrorized her people for years and years . . . 

Her first sight of him, at King's Cross nearly a year ago, hadn't disappointed her. While she hadn't known just _who_ the soft-spoken, hesitant boy with wild black hair and bright green eyes was, he'd intrigued her, and the moment she'd found out that it was _Harry Potter_--

It had been a crushing blow when her mother hadn't allowed her to get on the train to see him. But then Ron had written home that he'd made fast friends with him, and shared a blow-by-blow account of his entire history, she'd started to see other facets to the knight-in-shining-armor figure she'd made of him. 

He'd never had a home or a loving family like she had all her life. It was like--it was like living your _whole life_ like she had last year, Ron's first year, just herself and her parents. No brothers around the house to play with, only three people at the table, just yourself for Mum to pester--it had been the most boring year of Ginny's entire life.

And it couldn't really have even been anything like that, because Ron said Harry said his aunt and uncle ignored him and favored their own horrible son, who in his turn bullied Harry mercilessly. Her brothers were horrible to her, of course, but Mum and Dad were always there, and sometimes she managed to be horrible back.

Ginny thought of something else.

How did they think they were going to explain Harry Potter's suddenly turning up? Knowing them, they were going to bound into the kitchen, all _joie de vivre_ and joyful surprise. They'd pull Harry out of the hall, cry in amazement, "Mum, look who popped over for a quick visit in the night!" and expect it to be done there. Really!

"Mum'll know how it was done," she muttered. "She _always_ does."

"I always know what? What are you doing out of bed, Ginny?"

Ginny gave a strangled scream and stood up so fast she tripped over her own slippers. Her mum was standing on the porch, nightgowned and be-wrappered, her hair in two braids much like Ginny's own. 

She raised an eyebrow and said, "Well?"

"I--I woke up," Ginny gabbled, trying desperately not to look at the shed door, which was hanging open like a Venus-fly trap. "And--I couldn't sleep. And--I went for a walk." So far the truth, if not the whole truth. She'd used to sleepwalk when she was small, and often walked at night.

Her mum eyed her. "Hm. You're not the only one up."

"Fred and George and Ron went for a walk too, I expect," Ginny burbled. "Be back any minute, no doubt."

"But I didn't say who it was."

Ginny shut her mouth with a click.

Like an Auror rolling up his sleeves prior to blasting a Death Eater into unconsciousness, her mum slowly put her hands on her hips. "Vir-gin-ia. _What_ are you up to?"

"Nothing," Ginny squeaked.

"And the boys?"

Her mouth tried to form the word _Nothing_, but she couldn't get it out.

Her mother's foot tapped on the boards of the porch. "Where have they gone, Ginny?"

Ginny stared at her feet. "T'ge'Har'Po'er."

"What?"

"To get Harry Potter," she said a little more clearly.

"To--! Well of all the-- _We_ were going to--" Her mother shut her mouth with a snap. "And how?" she said after a moment.

Ginny's eyes darted toward the shed. Her mother followed her gaze, and her eyes narrowed. She marched past Ginny to peer into the shed, and Ginny took the opportunity to make her escape.

  


* * *

  


She woke up the next morning with a fuzzy head, blinking and yawning. She wasn't much of a morning person, but she knew that if she didn't get up soon the boys would eat everything in the kitchen. She sat up, rubbing her head. Something--nice was going to happen today--if only she could remember-- 

She shrugged and swung her feet over the side of her bed, shoving them into her battered slippers. She'd find out soon enough.

Voices echoed from the kitchen up the stairs as Ginny shuffled, yawning, down them. Mum was in a right taking this morning, from the sounds of it, and Ginny wondered hazily what her brothers had done this time. She wandered into the kitchen.

Sitting at the table were Ron, George, Fred, and--

Ginny squealed right out loud, dove back into the corridor, thundered up the stairs, and slammed her bedroom door behind her.

Harry Potter.

She was completely awake now, and she remembered the previous night's events quite well. Why couldn't she have remembered this _before_?

She caught a glimpse of herself in the little mirror above her chest of drawers and wailed soundlessly. Bits of hair had escaped from her braids and were sticking out in a fuzzy halo. Her nightgown had daisies on it, and her bedraggled slippers had _teddy bears_! She looked about six!

Her head clonked back against the door.

  


* * *

  


Half an hour later, she ventured back downstairs. She'd brushed out her hair--horrid red Weasley hair; _why_ couldn't she have been a golden-blonde--and put on jeans and a rather pretty blouse, white with short lace sleeves. She hadn't dared dress up any more, because she'd never hear the end of it.

The kitchen was deserted except for her mother, who was measuring flour out into a bowl. "Good morning, dear," she said. "You're finally wearing that blouse, I see. I knew it'd be lovely on you."

"Oh? I hadn't--um--noticed," Ginny said casually. "Did the boys go to bed?"

Her mother smiled at the flour, although Ginny couldn't quite figure out why. "Heavens, no," she said with asperity. "I sent them out to de-gnome the garden. Harry went with them to watch. He's never seen one."

Ginny ignored this flabbergasting statement and went to peek out the window. If Harry was watching, maybe she could go out there and sit by him--maybe even _talk_ to him, although that meant she'd have to untie her tongue.

But he was in the thick of it, hurling gnomes right alongside her brothers, and Ginny sank back onto her heels with a sigh. She couldn't possibly go help with the de-gnoming in this shirt, and by the time she changed, it would probably be done.

"Do you want some breakfast, dear?"

"I suppose." She skulked back to the breakfast table and ate six sausages, three slabs of toast, and a fried egg with little enthusiasm.

"Are you feeling well, Ginny? You're not eating much."

Ginny shrugged, toying with her last piece of toast. "Mum? How long is Harry staying?"

"Until you children leave for Hogwarts," her mother replied, heaving the lump of bread dough out of her bowl and onto the befloured counter.

Ginny's head snapped up. "He's not going home?"

"As _if_ I'd send him home to those Muggles--fine sort of person I'd be if I did--" Her mother was plainly indignant, kneading the dough to within an inch of its life. "They had him locked in his room, feeding him on tinned soup, once a day--" She aimed a furious punch at the very center of the dough ball, which was helpless against the onslaught.

Ginny was horrified. Of all the sins possible, starvation was surely the worst for the Weasleys. Food was love, and to feed your own family on nothing more than a tin of soup once a day--

"I suppose he'll have to go home next summer, but we'll ask him to stay as quickly as we can--some people, I don't know--" _Thwap_ went the dough. "I'm making beef stroganoff tonight, dear, so I'll need you to cut me plenty of mushrooms from the garden." A bit calmer now, she glanced at her daughter. "Though not, I think, in that blouse."

"I'll go change." Ginny took one last sausage with her on her way up.

She hesitated over what to wear, but then thought, _I'll be mucking about in the garden, and it'll be the devil's own work to keep anything clean. Might as well wear something comfortable and not have to worry. Probably Harry won't even notice_, she added grumblingly.

She'd just thrown on a battered t-shirt and started to open up her door, but then she heard someone coming up the stairs, and peeked out. It would be safe to go out if it was Percy, but the twins would be merciless--

She saw the untidy hair, glinting slightly in the morning light, and almost hit herself. Why hadn't she considered that it could be _him_?

She couldn't resist looking, just for a minute, but then he looked up at her door, and she slammed it shut and leaned against it, her cheeks on fire once again. Through the wood, she heard her brother's voice: "Ginny. You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally--"

If Harry replied at all, she didn't hear it--although why should he be particularly interested in her? She'd made such an _idiot_ of herself!

Definitely not the best of first impressions.


	2. Tom

  


Tom

  


It didn't get any better over the next few weeks. True to his word, Ron put a nest of garden snakes in her bed in retaliation for having told on them, and Ginny had woken the entire household with her terrified shrieks. She hated, hated, _hated_ snakes. 

But when she saw everyone, including Harry, gaping at her as she stood on her dresser, cowering away from the horrid slithery things all over the floor, she hated Ron more.

The worst of it was that she couldn't get back at him. She didn't know how Harry felt about spiders, or that would have been her first resort. She couldn't put anything in Ron's food, because she wasn't nearly as quick as either of the twins. She couldn't even draft them to help her, because they blamed her for Mum's punishments too. In fact, they'd probably helped with the detestable snakes. 

Percy was no help--he told her, condescendingly, that if she ignored Ron and the twins, they'd stop. She gazed at him in disbelief, trying to figure out how one could live in this household for a lifetime and actually think that.

In the end, she resorted to ignoring all three of them, very pointedly--not so they'd stop, as Percy seemed to think, but as punishment. Unfortunately, this meant she had to ignore Harry too, since he and Ron were always together.

Ignoring had usually worked before. Normally, after three or four days in Coventry, Ron was so crabby and lonely that he'd dropped whatever grudge he'd had against her and started acting nice. 

But she might as well have been a wall, for all the effect it had this time. He seemed to utterly forget she existed. He didn't need her--he had Harry.

Not that she could blame Harry, who seemed to delight in everything and everybody in the Weasley household. He had boundless patience for explaining the Muggle world to her dad, and ate everything her mum put in front of him. He even smiled at her every so often, and declined to take part when Ron twitted her, and was kind enough to pretend not to notice when she knocked things over or tripped or babbled--all of which she did quite a lot of in his presence.

But Harry's kindness aside, Ginny was without a playmate again, and she found that being lonely in the middle of a crowd of brothers was ten times worse than being lonely with only her parents about.

It was only until she got to Hogwarts, Ginny kept telling herself. Once she got there, it'd be just like Bill and Charlie and Percy and Fred and George and Ron, and she'd make absolutely _loads_ of friends, and she'd be having so much fun that she wouldn't care two pins for her brothers' company.

She started counting down. 

One morning, as she sat spooning up porridge and calculating again how many days there were until school started (nineteen), three official Hogwarts owls swooped through the kitchen window, one after the other, and perched on the counter.

"Ah, I'd been wondering when these were coming," her mum said, wiping her hands on her apron and taking the creamy-parchment letters, two each, from the owls. They clacked their beaks, ruffled their feathers, and were off again. 

"There you are, Ginny," her dad said, taking them from her mum and passing one to her. "Your very first Hogwarts letter! What d'you think of that?"

Ginny took it with awe. She remembered all her brothers getting theirs, and them setting off to Diagon Alley to buy robes and books and wands, and now here was hers, lovely and smooth in her hands, with its pretty green writing.

_We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. . . ._

She'd had the most illogical fear, lately, that she'd turn out a Squib--but no, here was her letter, big as life.

Voices echoed in the hallway. "What d'you want to do today, eh, Harry?"

"Dunno--"

Ginny tried to push her porridge bowl aside to oh-so-casually spread her lovely Hogwarts letter out flat on the table (where Harry couldn't help but notice) but only succeeded in knocking the entire bowl off the table and onto the floor. _Oh, smooth, Virginia!_ she raged at herself, diving under to retrieve it. She could have fried the bacon on her face as she sat up again to see Ron smirking at her, and there was an unholy mess under her seat now.

Harry, thankfully, pretended not to notice any of it, although she didn't see how he could have missed it if he were both blind _and_ deaf.

Ginny caught her mum's eye, and then the towel she tossed. Gritting her teeth, she set about cleaning it up while the boys (including the twins, who ambled in a moment later) were issued their letters and looked them over.

When she finished, she maliciously draped the gloppy towel on the back of Fred's chair. He didn't notice, because he was leaning over to read Harry's book-list.

"You've been told to get all Lockhart's books too! The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan." He grinned widely. "Bet it's a witch."

Their mum, on her way over to retrieve the towel from the back of his chair, shot him a look, and he quickly grabbed for the marmalade and started trowelling it onto his toast. Mum had a thing for Lockhart, and the twins and their dad had a thing for teasing her about it.

George's voice was a little more worried than Ginny was used to hearing. "That lot won't come cheap. Lockhart's books are really expensive . . ."

Ginny winced and picked up her list. She hadn't managed to read it before brilliantly knocking her porridge over, and she was hoping that her class hadn't been assigned Lockhart's books. But there they all were, all seven of them, scrolling down the page along with _The Standard Book of Spells_, _A History of Magic,_ and all the others. She could almost _hear_ her dad's meagre pay blowing away in the wind.

Mum said in her brightest we'll-survive-this-haven't-we-before voice, "Well, we'll manage. I expect we'll be able to pick up a lot of Ginny's things secondhand."

Ginny didn't even so much as sigh at this--she'd been expecting it. In any case, she didn't have time to bewail her secondhand fate, because Harry asked, "Oh, are you starting at Hogwarts this year?"

In the highly complicated and taxing process of nodding in the affirmative, she managed to put her elbow in the butter dish.

  


* * * 

  


The next Wednesday evening found Ginny was sitting in her room, looking over all her schoolbooks. She hugged every one of her sparkling new Lockhart books--not because Lockhart impressed her at all (really, what was it with him and that photographer? he'd made Harry _horribly_ uncomfortable, any idiot could have seen it) but because Harry had given them just to her, instead of to Ron or his other friend Hermione. "You have these," he'd told her, dumping them into her cauldron. "I'll buy my own--"

He could, too--she'd caught a glimpse, round his elbow, of his vault, piled high with more gold than she'd ever seen in her life. It must all be from his parents, and for a moment she was envious, but then she thought, _I'll bet he'd trade all that gold for them back_, and her envy faded. At least she had Mum and Dad.

She picked up the Transfiguration book Dad had gotten for her and sighed. She knew she was being horrid, wishing it was as new and glossy as the Lockhart books, but Mr. Malfoy's words had stung her pride as badly as they'd stung her father's. _"It's the best your father can do for you . . ."_

Her chin stuck out. She'd rather have a father who did his best and loved his children than a nasty bullying git like him. Dad couldn't help it that his job paid so little, and that there were so many of them. And there _were_ five of them at Hogwarts this year. It hadn't helped that Ron and the twins were still growing like mad and needed robes as much as Ginny did. Percy was growing too, but not as quickly anymore, and he could live with turned-down hems for a term or so.

"You know, dear," Mum had sighed to her in the second-hand robe shop, eyeballing a hem length for George and Fred, "I'd learn to sew if I thought I had the time . . ." Mum could mend, but mending was a far cry from running up whole new suits of clothing.

Ginny thought, touching the cover of the Transfiguration book, that she'd have to take really good care of these books if she wanted them to last. But that, of course, was nothing new. It went along with being a Weasley. 

Sighing again, Ginny riffled the pages, checking for loose ones she'd have to Spellotape back in. Something fell out, bouncing off her knee and hitting the floor, but it wasn't a page.

She picked it up. It was a small black notebook, as shabby as the book that had housed it. There was a year on the cover--she did some quick math. Fifty years old. Well--! If it was fifty years old, it was actually in rather good shape.

She opened it up. "T.M. Riddle," she read to herself. "Who's that?"

She riffled through the pages, but they were all completely blank. Whoever T.M. Riddle was, he hadn't bothered to use this notebook. Very well then--finders keepers. She'd need a notebook for school.

She reached for one of her new quills (really honestly new ones--you couldn't get _them_ secondhand) and a bottle of ink. With a firm stroke, she crossed out _T.M. Riddle_ and wrote _Miss Virginia Elizabeth Weasley _just under it. 

She stuck her quill back into the ink bottle and admired the name, the delightful _adultness_ of it for a moment. But only for a moment. 

Even as she watched, it appeared to dissolve and disappear--name and cross-out together.

Those twins! They must have slipped her invisible ink!

Fuming, she turned to the bags of school supplies and dug out another one, checking carefully to see that the seal was unbroken and it read _Lady Macbeth's Indelible Ink, for all your composition needs_ before she turned back to the notebook.

**Hello, Miss Virginia Elizabeth Weasley. So you've found my diary?**

She screamed out loud and dropped the new bottle of ink, which shattered all over the floor and her rug.

There was a knock at the door. "Ginny? Are you all right? I heard you scream."

"N-nothing, Mum," Ginny called back, staring at the page, with the impossible words still sitting there, for all the world as if they expected to be answered. "I--dropped something. A bottle of ink. All over my rug."

There was a sigh. "Not one of your new ones? Ginny, ink is expensive."

"I--I know. I'll clean it up, Mum."

"Bring your rug on out here and I'll give you some Mrs. Skower's."

Ginny did as she was told, but all the while she was Mrs. Skowering the mess off the floor boards, her eyes kept returning to the diary, sitting innocuously on her bed. The words had disappeared, and she was wondering if she'd imagined it, after all.

Once the ink was no more than a faint splodge on her floor, she got up and peered at the blank page. Maybe it only said something if you wrote your name.

Her hand trembling, she wrote, _Virginia Guinevere Weasley._

There was an answer at once.** Hello, are you the same person who wrote before? Only your name's a bit different.**

_Yes,_ she wrote. _I mean, I'm the same person. Neither Guinevere or Elizabeth is my real middle name. I was trying them out. I want a new one._

**What is your real middle name?**

_Myrtle_, Ginny wrote, making a moue of distaste at the page. Drat Nana Myrtle, who'd insisted that the first girl born in this generation had to have _her_ name.

**I don't blame you. I knew a Myrtle once--she was _extremely _tiresome. I'm sure it doesn't suit you at all.**

Ginny blushed. _That's very nice of you to say so. Who are you?_

**My name is Tom Riddle. You found my diary, then?**

_Yes, it was in an old schoolbook._

**Ahhhh. Tell me about yourself, Virginia.**

_You can call me Ginny--everyone does._

**Ginny, then. Tell me about yourself.**

  


* * *

  


The day she found Tom was the end of Ginny's loneliness. She could tell him anything and everything, and she did. His sympathy and support was like balm to her oft-wounded pride, and he always knew what to say. Even better, he told her things about his own schooldays at Hogwarts--things like shortcuts to the Great Hall, which corridors to avoid if you didn't want to get hopelessly lost, and all the best rambles around the grounds. She took to spending more and more time shut away in her room, talking to him.

She heard Fred say, one evening as she was leaving the kitchen after dinner, "What's up with _her_, eh? She got a boyfriend in her room?"

Ginny's cheeks flamed.

Her mum said, "Leave her alone. A girl needs her privacy sometimes."

"Why?" Ron piped up, annoyingly. "She never did before!"

Ginny scowled.

_They're like that all the time,_ she moaned to Tom that night. _They treat me like a baby, and I'm NOT!_

**I know you're not. How could you be?**

Most comforting was the way he was always willing to listen to what she had to say about Harry, even asking questions about things she hadn't mentioned. He'd actually never heard of Harry--he'd preserved himself in this diary fifty years ago, long before You-Know-Who was even thought of. It was so wonderful to be able to pour it all out to him. She had a lot of things to pour out and most of them were about Harry.

One episode that gave her an hour's worth of writing happened one rather nippy morning shortly after their expedition to Flourish and Blotts. Harry walked into the kitchen by himself, and when Ginny snuck a look at him, she realized with a thrill that he was wearing the jumper they'd given him for Christmas. 

_It really is quite nice_, she thought proudly. The color of green her mum had picked did bring out his eyes, just as she'd hoped it would. It had been her idea, because she knew from Ron's letters how much his relatives despised him, and how unlikely it was that he would get anything from them, much less a wonderful jumper knitted just for him. She sat smiling to herself, basking in the fuzzy glow of a good idea brought to fruition. 

Her dad glanced over and said, "Like your jumper, Harry."

Harry grinned at him. "Lovely and warm, Mr. Weasley."

Ginny waited expectantly for her father to add, "It was Ginny's idea, you know."

And Harry would turn to her-- "It was? Thanks, Ginny! I love it!"

And she would say, "Oh, it was nothing, really--I just thought you might like an extra present . . ."

And he would--

But her father merely smiled to himself and went back to the paper. Ginny's shoulders drooped. How was he ever supposed to notice her if her parents, of all people, didn't give her a little help?

"Where's Ron?" her mum asked Harry. "Is he up yet?"

"He was still asleep, but I was hungry. Thanks." Harry took the plate her mum handed him.

She was poking morosely at the remains of her third egg when Harry said, "What are you up to today, Ginny?"

She was so surprised that she dropped her fork with a resounding clatter. "I--why--I--" She was struck with inspiration, God only knew from where, and blurted, "I'm walking down to the village."

"Oh--what's down there? I haven't been yet."

"Oh--uhm--shops and--things--" She casually reached for her juice glass and knocked it over. Fortunately, it was nearly empty, and only a few drops spilled onto the table, but her face went up in flames anyway.

Harry picked up his napkin and casually dropped it on top of the spill before she could reach for hers, and carried on as if it hadn't happened. "Like what?"

In some corner of her dazzled brain, she realized that he was probably talking to her because Ron and the twins and Percy weren't down, and her dad was reading and her mum was cooking. But she didn't care, because he was, after all, _talking_ to her . . . "There's a bookshop," she said, "and a Muggle sweets shop--"

"It's not half so keen as Honeydukes, though," Fred said, coming in. "Nothing there that'll burn a hole through your tongue."

_And that was the end of it, Tom_, she related mournfully a little while later. _I just know that if Fred hadn't barged in, he might've gone to the village with me, or at least talked to me some more . . . _

**He will someday, Ginny**, he wrote back.

_I certainly hope so, but I'll have to get all my brothers out of the way first!_

  


* * *

  


_Only one day left, Tom, _she wrote one evening a week later, snuggling down into her pillows. _We leave for Hogwarts tomorrow morning. I'm so excited!_

**I'm excited too--it'll almost be like being back there. Is Dumbledore still the Transfigurations master?**

_No, he's the Headmaster now. Was he your teacher, Tom?_

**Yes. If you could see me, I'd be making a face. He's terribly strict, and he's suspicious of everyone.**

_Really? _Ginny asked in surprise. _My parents think very well of him, and even my brothers like him. Harry especially has a lot of respect for him._

**Oh, well--it has been fifty years. People change, I suppose. Better get some sleep, Ginny--it'll be a big day tomorrow!**


	3. The Hogwarts Express

  


The Hogwarts Express

  


Ginny overslept the next morning, and was jolted awake by feet thudding past her door. She had to practically dive into her clothes, since she only had half an hour to get her things downstairs and get some breakfast before they set off for London and King's Cross. She was just wrestling her trunk down the stairs when she heard her mother's voice in the kitchen. 

"Now," Mum was saying sternly. "You two, I want you to listen sharp. This is going to be Ginny's first year away from home--"

"Yeah, yeah, we'll take care of the Wee One," George said thickly. It sounded as if he had a piece of toast in his mouth. "Don't _worry_, Mum."

"Not only that! Listen to me. Your sister's coming up on a very touchy time for a girl, and I want you two, especially, to be a little nicer to her, all right?"

"Oh, Mum, it's only Ginny. She knows we're just playing about."

"She knows nothing of the sort. She's going to be very sensitive for a bit, and you two won't make it any easier, playing your tricks. You could at least hold off teasing her in front of--well, you-know-who."

"You-Know-Who?" George asked merrily. "Shouldn't think we'll run into him this year, Mum."

"Especially after the number Harry did on him last year." Fred snorted with laughter.

"Stop playing about! You know exactly who it is I mean."

"Oh, right. Harry the Magnificent."

"The object of all her affections."

Ginny buried her face in her hands. They _knew . . . _

Her mother gave a loud, exasperated sigh. "That's _exactly_ the sort of thing I'm talking about. It may seem rather silly and childish to us, but it's very important to Ginny, and I don't want you twitting her about it."

Silly? Childish! They knew nothing about it, _nothing!_

"Now, I've given Ron this same talk, and I want you to keep an eye on him too. Try not to leave him out, like you did last year."

"Leave _him_ out?"

"That's rich, I must say."

"Didn't see him taking _us_ up to wrestle a troll, now did you?"

"_Or_ through McGonagall's chessboard."

"I hardly think either of those were a lark for your brother," their mother said sternly. 

"What about Percy?" Fred asked suddenly. "Still have to lecture him, do you?"

"Percy knows what I expect of him, and he knows to take care of your sister especially."

Ginny's eyes narrowed. She'd rather _not_ be taken care of by _Percy_, thank you very much. She gave her trunk a yank, and it slipped on the stairs, thundering down them all the way to the bottom, where it landed with an almighty crash.

Three red heads appeared around the corner. "All right there, Ginny-Ginny-Wee-One?" Fred called.

She stuck her nose in the air and marched down the scarred stairs to her trunk, which was standing on one end. "I--can--handle--it--myself," she grunted, tugging on one of the handles and not budging it one inch.

Her mum gave the twins a look, and Fred shouldered her gently aside as George, with little visible effort, righted her trunk. With barely a grunt, they each heaved an end onto their shoulders and strolled off through the kitchen to set it on the porch for their father to load into the car.

"Mind you thank them, Ginny," her mother told her. "Toast?"

"No," Ginny snarled, and stomped back up the stairs to her room to get the rest of her things.

  


* * *

  


A long while later, she was sitting in the front seat, wedged between her mother and her mother's purse. She was in a bad temper--this was the third time they'd started off, since the idiot twins had _both_ forgotten something and they'd had to go back two separate times. Wait 'til she told Tom--

She sat straight up and shrieked, "_My diary!_" She'd left it on her night stand, because she'd been writing to Tom before going to sleep the night before. "Mum, we _have_ to go back!"

"Ginny! We're almost to the motorway!"

"Please, Mum, I need to have it!"

With a heavy sigh, her father turned the Anglia around for the third time.

She couldn't write to Tom as they were travelling to King's Cross, because her mother would certainly read over her shoulder and start scolding about the words writing back. Then her father would get into it--"Remember, Ginny, never trust anything that thinks for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain,"--and all in all, it would be more trouble than it was worth. Ginny was looking forward to getting on the Hogwarts Express and finding a quiet corner so she could finally pour everything out to Tom.

Humiliatingly, her mother took her _hand_, just as if she were still six years old, to march her through the familiar barrier. She'd been coming here every September she could remember to see her brothers off, but it was _her_ turn now, and couldn't Mum, just once, treat her like the almost-grown-up she was?

The Hogwarts Express, as scarlet and smoky as the last nine times Ginny had seen it, was free of the normal crowd of students, owls, trunks, packages, broomsticks, and other miscellaneous debris. Only the parents were still on the platform, waving goodbyes and calling advice and admonishments to their students, hanging out of windows. Ginny's family was so late that after her things were loaded on, they barely had barely two minutes until it left.

"Now Ginny," her mum said, taking out her handkerchief. "I want you to enjoy yourself at school, dear--" Her voice was a little shaky, but Ginny stood scowling and casting fearful glances at the engine, and didn't notice. "Don't let the boys get to you, they don't mean anything by it really, and do behave yourself--" 

She rubbed some dust off the end of Ginny's nose, and Ginny jerked her head away. "Mum! I'm going to miss the train!"

Her mother's voice turned crisp. "All right--get on now, quickly!" Just as if Ginny had been the one holding _her _back!

Ginny, clutching her diary to her stomach, leapt aboard without even hugging her parents goodbye. The train gave a great jerk, starting off, just as she reached the door of the compartment her dad had put her things in. She tripped onto a seat, almost sliding off.

Fred hooted. "Graceful, Wee One!"

She wanted throw her diary at his head, but he'd only try to read it. So she settled for throwing him a dirty look instead. "Shuturrrrrrrrrrp," she muttered, shoving herself deep into the seat and digging for the tiny ink bottle and quill she'd put in her pockets.

George poked her in the ribs. "Oy, Virginia."

"Stop it!" She slapped at his hand.

"Hey, that hurt!"

"Good."

"Now look, did you see Ron and Harry get on board?"

"No," she said snootily, and then stopped. "No," she repeated, in quite a different tone of voice. "I didn't. They were to go last, after me and Mum--"

Fred put his feet up on her knees. "Stop bothering about it, George," he told his twin, not even wincing when Ginny kicked the underside of his calves. "I told you, they probably nipped on board in all the confusion. You're starting to sound like Percy."

"Oy, you, take that back!" 

"Make me!"

Ginny yanked her legs up onto the seat as her brothers tumbled around the compartment, apparently intent on breaking each other's necks, or at least their own. "Stop it!" she shrieked furiously. "Stop it!"

The compartment door whizzed open, and a cheerful-looking black boy in fantastically long dreadlocks poked his head. "Ha, I thought I heard a Weasley in here!"

Fred's head popped up. "You heard three of 'em, Lee!" He flipped his twin off his back, but George had him in a head lock the next moment. 

"Say fifth-cousin-twice-removed's stepmother's auntie's old roommate!"

Fred dissolved into snorts of laughter, and George started laughing too. "Hallo, Lee, have a good summer?" he asked once he had his breath back.

"Pretty good--glad to be back though." The dreadlocked boy stepped through the compartment door, followed by a pretty girl, caramel-skinned with short, tightly curly hair. "This here's my little sister, Carmen," he said casually. "She's a firstie this year. Carmie," the girl tried to kick him, but he skipped out of the way, "here's Fred Weasley, on bottom, and George Weasley, trying to kill him as usual."

"Oh, that's right, you've got a little sister too." Fred, still in George's deadlock, propped his head up on his hand and lounged as if he were in a daybed. "That's ours, on the seat--Mum's little pwessus, Ginny."

Carmen rolled her eyes at Ginny. "Brothers, eh?" she said in deep disgust.

"What did _I_ say?" Fred asked innocently, and, reaching back, poked George between the third and fourth ribs, his worst ticklish spot. 

When George, roaring with agonized tickle-laughter, rolled into her legs and accidentally kicked her shin, Ginny had had enough. Gathering up her diary, she stepped from his stomach to Fred's foot to the floor and stalked out.

  


* * *

  


Not a single compartment Ginny stuck her head into contained either Harry or Ron, or information on their whereabouts. The last one in the line contained only a girl, curled up on the seat, deeply absorbed in a book. She looked up, blinking, at Ginny's question. "No, I haven't, and I'm rather worried. You're Ron's sister, aren't you? We met in Flourish and Blott's."

Ginny recognized her then--Hermione, Ron and Harry's studious friend. "Yes, that's me."

"Well, would you like to sit? There's enough room for all four of us."

Ginny looked at the cover of the book Hermione was reading and saw Gilderoy Lockhart's big cheesy grin. She almost gagged. Hermione was actually _reading_ them? "I think I'll try to find them first."

"All right. Listen, when you do, tell them I'm in this compartment, all right?"

Ginny nodded and shut the compartment door. _They're probably somewhere else in the train_, she told herself. _I'll see them when I get to Hogwarts._ If she continued searching, she'd never have any time to write to Tom, which she badly needed to do by this time.

She met Fred and George in the passageway, and said, "I couldn't find them. Do you think they missed the train?"

Fred snorted. "They're probably off in some compartment with their _girl_friend, eating Jelly Slugs and Chocolate Frogs as fast as they can."

"Yeah, don't worry about it," said George.

"I saw Hermione," Ginny said coldly. "She hadn't seen them either. And she's not Ron's _or _Harry's girlfriend." She hoped--oh she hoped--well, she didn't care if Ron had a girlfriend, but not Harry--Hermione really was much too serious for him. Attraction of opposites and all that. Besides, she liked _Gilderoy Lockhart!_

"If you say so, Wee One."

  


* * *

  


_I'm on the Hogwarts Express, and my brothers are being awful, awful, AWFUL! _

**What'd they do this time?**

_It started with Mum--she was telling them to take care of me. Take care of me! I'm eleven whole years old, why can't they see that? Well, not precisely--at Halloween I am--but still! _

****

I can't understand it either.

__

And then Fred and George absolutely positively HUMILIATED me in front of their friend. They called me Mum's little pwessus, Tom! Isn't that perfectly dreadful?

**Absolutely; the Cruciatus is too good for them.**

_The what?_

**It's a nasty curse.**

Ginny wondered what it entailed. _Probably it is too good for them. Oh--Tom! I can't find Harry or Ron on the train anywhere! I even asked their special friend, Hermione, and she hadn't seen them. And speaking of that--the twins said that Hermione was Harry's girlfriend, Tom. D'you think that's true?_

**Is she pretty?**

Ginny had initially thought her rather nice-looking, but on reflection, she decided that Hermione's hair was really rather too _large_ for her head, and her teeth looked like a rabbit's. _No,_ she scribbled spitefully.

**Probably not, then. I shouldn't think you have anything to worry about.**

Ginny was attacked by another worry. _But he likes her--they're really good friends. And she's frightfully clever._

**Definitely not, then. Trust me; no boy makes friends with a girl he fancies. And _nobody_ fancies a clever girl.**

_I suppose you'd know, Tom._

The compartment door slapped closed behind someone, and Ginny looked up to see George, stretching out on the seat opposite her. "Where's Fred?"

"He's a few compartments over, with Katie Bell and Angelina Johnson and Morgan Hoffmeister." A darkish look flickered over George's face and went before Ginny could figure it out.

"Where's your friend?" she asked.

"Lee's off introducing Carmen to people who'll be a little nicer to her."

Ginny scowled. "Fred's right," she said. "You're getting more like Percy every day."

He narrowed his eyes at her, then quick as lightning, snapped the diary out of her hands. "What are you writing, Ginny-Ginny-Wee-One?" he taunted, holding it out of her reach.

She cried aloud, scrambling up on the seat to leap for it. "Give it back, George, give it back!"

He leapt up on the other seat, holding it almost to the ceiling, where she didn't have a hope of getting it. "Let's see," he mused loudly, opening it wide and making a show of squinting at it. Then he stopped in surprise. "Hey, you _were_ writing something in this, weren't you?" He flipped pages, back and forth, the puzzled look still on his face.

Oh, thank heaven--Tom must have absorbed the words before George opened it. "It's disappearing ink," she lied. "Ha ha!"

"Is not," he said.

"Is too! Give it back!"

He tossed it at her in disgust. "Fine, write in your little diary," he grumbled, unaccountably peevish. "See if I care." He leapt off the seat and slouched through the door, only stopping to yell over his shoulder, "Disappearing ink can reappear, you know!"

She stuck her tongue out at his back, secure in the knowledge that Tom, at least, would never betray her.

  


* * * 

  


George came back with Fred and the three girls about half an hour later, his bad mood completely gone and his customary _joie de vivre _in its place. He and Fred managed to get her diary from her again and spent fifteen minutes trying to read it by all sorts of means. When one of the girls--the one called Morgan--finally managed to retrieve it for her, Ginny was so close to tears that she just flew out of the compartment without even saying thank you. 

She found a hidey-hole in between cars, where nobody would disturb her. After some minutes of ranting to Tom, she was finally able to calm down, and he asked, **How far do you have to go yet?**

__

It's early afternoon, and we won't get there until late at night. Then we have to have the Sorting and start-of-term remarks before we eat. I'm starving already!

**Are you nervous about the Sorting?**

_A little. I really do hope I get sorted into Gryffindor. What were you?_

****

I was a Slytherin, actually.

__

What? Really? Oh, Tom, really?

****

You don't have to sound so appalled, Ginny!

__

But my brothers hate Slytherin--

****

Don't believe everything you hear--especially from them. They were the ones who told you that you were going to have to survive a night in the Forbidden Forest in order to get sorted, weren't they?

_Ooo, yes. Gits._ Ginny scowled at the page in memory. It had been Tom who'd relieved her fears by telling her about the Sorting Hat. 

****

See now. Would it be so bad to be in a different house than your brothers?

__

Well . . . sort of no, but sort of yes. I mean, I really honestly want to be a Gryffindor. My entire family, back to forever_, has been in Gryffindor. It would be so strange to be a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff instead, not even mentioning Slytherin!_

****

Which house is Harry in?

__

Gryffindor, of course! He's a Gryffindor through and through! Just like my brothers--as much as I hate to admit it. Oh, Tom, do you really think I'll get put in some other house than Gryffindor?

****

You'll found out soon enough.

  


* * *

  


_Tom, oh, Tom, oh, Tom!!_

**What? What is it?**

_I'm in Gryffindor, I'm in GRYFFINDOR! The hat very nearly put me in Slytherin, but I asked so hard to be in Gryffindor, and I AM!_

**Good for you--that's what you wanted, isn't it?**

_Yes! Oh, Tom, if you could see me now--I'm yawning so hugely my face feels like it could crack, but I'm smiling all over too. And it was a wonderful first night--everyone was so boisterous and happy because--you'll never guess!_

**Because they were back at school? I always went delirious with joy when I came back to school.**

_That too, I suppose, but--this is so wild! Harry and Ron, when they missed the Hogwarts Express (they really did; they said the barrier wouldn't open for some reason. I suppose the clock was wrong or something, and they tried too late.) went out into the street and stole Dad's flying car! All sorts of Muggles saw it and they got in frightful trouble, but all us Gryffindors (don't you like the sound of that? Us Gryffindors! I do) thought it was brilliant!_

**And so it is! What a way to arrive! Your handwriting is getting rather scrawly, Ginny--what time is it?**

_Oh my goodness--it's past midnight! G'nite Tom, and I'll tell you absolutely everything about tomorrow as soon as I can. I'm going to positively love it here, I just know I am!_


	4. Halloween

  


Halloween

  


By the end of September, the first years had all settled into their groups. Carmen Jordan had been accepted into a band of free-ranging mischief makers. There was a tiny clump of studious sorts, who worshipped Hermione Granger as a goddess. There was a mildly frightening band of Quidditch enthusiasts, who spent most of their time arguing the Wronski Feint versus the Alvarez bluff. In and around these main groups were tiny knots and pairs of friends . . . and then there was Ginny.

She'd taken to spending all her free time alone in the dormitory room, writing in her diary. Tom was the only one who understood her--_really_ understood her. _I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in_, she scribbled one rainy evening, as a raucous game of Exploding Snap was taking place in the common room below her. _It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket._

**Well, I'm glad you found me, Ginny**_, _Tom wrote back. **You've got no idea how lonely it is to talk only to yourself.**

__

It can't be any worse than sitting in class with nobody to talk to, she wrote back gloomily.

**Are they still being beastly to you?**

_Nobody in my year, but my brothers--they're so AWFUL to me all the time. I can't believe it. Ron doesn't even TALK to me anymore. _She made a little "tuh" sound with teeth and tongue.

__

**And what about the twins?**

_I WISH they wouldn't talk to me. They're horrid, absolutely horrid. They pull my hair when they pass me in the hallways and call me Wee One where people can HEAR and put things in my food at dinner. And then they just howl with laughter._

**Have you told them off?**

_As if they'd listen to me._

**Good point. What about Percy?**

_If it's possible, he's even worse, although not in the same way at all. He's taking Mum very seriously_--she scowled in remembered humiliation--_and he keeps trying to include me in things, or tell the twins off, and that just makes everything worse. On top of all that, he's always trying to get me to stop talking to you! "Stop writing in that diary, Ginny, and do your homework. Put away that diary, Ginny, and come play cards with me. Come on, Ginny, close that diary, it's time for lunch." I honestly wish he were like Ron and didn't know I was there. _She sighed. _Oh, Tom, Hogwarts isn't anything like I thought it'd be. _

****

What did I tell you?

_Chin up,_ she scribbled obediently. _Head high. Never let anyone see how much you're hurting. _She repeated it to herself often, some days hourly.

****

Good girl. Isn't there anyone here besides me that isn't horrible to you?

__

No--even Filch's cat is nasty to me. I always sort of wished I had a cat, you know, but there's too much wildlife in my house already, and besides my parents couldn't afford another mouth to feed. Well, this cat of Filch's--I wouldn't want any animal like that! When I tried to pet it a few days ago, it scratched me all up and down my arm. Madam Pomfrey fixed it, of course, but--oh, what a horrid beast!

****

What about Harry Potter? Does he follow your brother Ron's lead?

_No,_ she wrote with another sigh, this one for an entirely different reason. _But he's so involved with Ron and Hermione and everything that he barely even says hello. Of course, that's better than anyone else, but that shouldn't surprise me in the least._

The dormitory door opened, and Carmen Jordan came in. Ginny swiftly shoved the diary under her pillow and grabbed up one of her Lockhart books--it didn't matter which, they were all alike.

"Ginny," Carmen said. "Would you like to come downstairs? To the common room? I'm sure it's much nicer than being shut up in here all evening. We can play Exploding Snap."

Ginny buried her nose in the Lockhart book, barely seeing the ridiculous words in front of her. "I've got to study. We've got a quiz tomorrow."

"Well--well, can I study with you? I haven't read that one all the way through yet and I could probably use the help."

"I don't think I'd be of any help to you--this is my first time reading it too." _The troll must have been twenty feet tall, but it was no match for my wit . . . _Lockhart's quizzes were dead easy; flatter him enough and he gave you top marks.

__

"Well, then, we can both go to Hermione Granger for help," Carmen persisted. "I'm sure she knows them backwards and forwards. What do you say?"

"Maybe some other time." Ginny knew she was being rude, but she wanted to get back to Tom.

"Well--all right. Come on down if you change your mind, all right? We can all shove up on the couch. Won't be a bit of trouble."

"Mhm."

Carmen left, closing the door after her, and Ginny straight away started to feel a little guilty. There hadn't been any call to be quite _that_ rude, had there? And Carmen was rather nice, sometimes, when she wasn't ignoring Ginny along with the rest of the Gryffindor first-years.

And maybe--maybe Percy was right, maybe she had ought to involve herself a little more . . . she _could_ just go for a little bit, and then come back upstairs to Tom . . . 

Her mind made up, Ginny closed the Lockhart book and clambered off her bed. But when she opened up the door, she heard Carmen's voice echoing up the spiral stairwell.

"Well, I tried, Lee. But she's just too good for the likes of us." She was standing just at the spot where the staircase began to bend, her hands on her hips. Ginny couldn't see who she was talking to, but it was obviously her older brother.

"You going to be the one to tell the Weasleys that?"

"God, no, they're _your_ friends. I know she's their baby sister, but honestly--!"

"Their mum told them to look after her, and their big brother's on their case about it too."

"Well, at least tell them to stop involving _me_ in their schemes to turn that little caterpillar into a butterfly." 

Ginny's shoe scraped against the stone, and Carmen turned, her mouth springing open in a gasp before she recovered and said brightly, "Oh! Are you going to study with us after all? Come on then--"

Her face twisting, Ginny stepped back into the dormitory and slammed the door shut. The tears of mingled rage and humiliation pouring down her face plopped onto the pages of the diary. As she wrote, they blurred her scritchy, wobbly handwriting and sank into the parchment along with the ink.

_I hate them, Tom, I hate them, HATE THEM! I hate them ALL! I wish I HAD been put in Slytherin!_

  


* * *

  


The next time Ginny opened her diary, however, she had something even worse to record than her social problems._ Dear Tom, I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I don't know how they got there._

**That's not good. When did this happen?**

_Just today. It was after my Herbology lesson. I must have daydreamed or something on the walk back, because suddenly I was in the common room and I was all over feathers . . ._

**Maybe the wind blew them there?**

_There were a LOT, Tom. I don't think it was the wind. I burned them in the common room fire. Everyone thought Fred and George had let off a stink bomb again._

****

Did they get in trouble?

_Them? God, no. Percy wasn't around, and everyone else thought it was hysterically funny. But the feathers, Tom--! Am I going mad? Should I tell someone?_

**Like who?**

_I dunno--a teacher? or Percy? I'm not talking to any of my other brothers, and they don't care, but Percy might--_

**I don't think he'd do you any good, Ginny. Better to keep it a secret. It mightn't happen again.**

  


* * *

  
__

Tom! I'm eleven years old today! I can't believe it!

****

Congratulations!

__

Ginny's mood soured a little. _But everyone's forgotten, I think--nobody's said anything anyway. None of my brothers, and--well, nobody else knows it's my birthday--and I didn't get anything in the mail this morning, and I really thought I might . . . I would have liked at least a cake or something, Mum always sends a cake to the boys on THEIR birthdays . . . _

**Oh--I am sorry for that, Ginny. Maybe she forgot.**

__

Her eyes widened. _Do you think she'd actually forget, Tom?_

**There are seven of you in total, right? It can't be easy to keep track of _that_ many birthdays in a year.**

_But there's only six; the twins, remember? And she keeps track of the entire family--my granddad and both grannies and all the aunties and uncles and cousins and everybody--even Harry--_

****

There you are then_. _**That's a terrible lot. She hadn't ought to have forgotten _your_ birthday, I know that, but some people . . . **

Ginny's hand flew up to cover her mouth. It must be--it must--her mum had always sent the birthday cakes off to her brothers on the very mornings of their birthdays. The only reason she didn't have it now was because she'd been forgotten. Utterly.

Her wobbling lip firmed up. Away for two piddling months and your own family completely forgot you existed--forgot your very first grown-up birthday, even!

_Oh, Tom, I don't feel like I have anyone anymore! This is horrible!_

**I promise you, Ginny, that you'll always have me.**

Yes, that was right. She hugged the diary to herself. She'd always have Tom--even when nobody else in the world seemed to remember she was alive.

  


* * *

  


Her problems kept mounting and mounting, Ginny thought gloomily, tucking her feet under her before she started to write.

__

Dear Tom, I can't remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my front. 

**Didn't you go to the feast with everyone else?**

_No, I stayed here. I was crying about--well, you know. And I could have sworn I cried myself to sleep--but then, the dreams, Tom! They were so strange! It was like I was running through a dark, slimy tunnel--not even running. Sort of slithering._

****

A little odd, I guess, but dreams don't mean anything, Ginny.

_But the next thing I remember after that, I was standing in the Gryffindor common room, and there was all this red paint, all over my robes! It was a horrible mess. I tried to clean it off, but I couldn't. And then everyone came in and told me about the cat that was attacked--_

**Attacked? What d'you mean, attacked?**

_It was--it was--_

**Killed?**

_No, though everyone thought it was at first. It was sort of--oh, it's horrible, Tom._ She was sitting in the common room, in a squashy armchair close to the blazing fire, but she felt a shiver roll down her spine.

__

**Best to get it all out at once, then.**

__

Turned to STONE, Tom.

**What? **His shock came through clearly in his handwriting. **But--how is that possible? How can that be possible?**

__

I don't know! The poor cat--I feel so awful. It was Filch's cat, you remember, the one I wrote such nasty things about. I'm wishing I hadn't, because it's just lying there in the infirmary like a statue. Filch is just heartbroken. He's gotten nastier than ever, but I can't help feeling a little sorry for him. 

****

But they don't know how it happened?

_No, nobody can figure it out! And they have to wait for the Mandrakes in the greenhouse to mature before they can revive her, and that's the ENTIRE YEAR. She was hanging off a wall sconce, and someone had written on the wall underneath, "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, Beware"! Nobody knows what it means, but everyone's talking about it!_

****

That is extraordinary.

_Do you know what it's talking about?_

**No, not at all.**

_Oh, Tom--and Harry found it!_

**Did he really? How--interesting.**

_Oh, yes! Nobody knows what he was doing up there at that time of night--I mean, Ron and Hermione were with him too, but it's him everyone's talking about. _

**Do you think he could have done it?**

__

Tom, how can you possibly say something like that? Harry would never, ever--even to that horrid cat! He's much too kind--he was just APPALLED--

****

I'm sorry about that, Ginny. I don't know what came over me. Please, forget I said it.

_That's all right, Tom. I know you didn't mean it, really. But, Tom--the PAINT--_

**Maybe you sleepwalked. Did you ever sleepwalk when you were little?**

__

Sometimes. Well, a lot actually. But I thought it had gone away.

****

You never know about these things. Maybe you brushed up against the wall when the paint was fresh.

_Do you really think so?_

****

I don't know what other explanation there could be.

_Oh, thank you. I feel so much better._

"Ginny," Percy said briskly, "shut up that diary. You've cried enough over that cat. Now, look, I've got something for you--"

She looked up and at the cake he set on the table, which was large and extremely sticky, with her favorite green icing. From the smell of it, the inside was chocolate. She _loved_ chocolate.

Saliva pooled on her tongue, but she swallowed it. She didn't need any forgot-your-birthday cake. It was just a shoddy attempt at getting her goodwill back, a guilt cake. She didn't need it!

She slid her diary into a pocket and got up. "You have it. I'm not hungry." And she left the common room, leaving her brother gaping after her.

"Well, I like that!" George said indignantly, coming up behind Percy. "She didn't want her _birthday cake?_"

"D'you think she's sick?" Percy asked thoughtfully

"Who knows? She's probably just honked off because Mum didn't get it here on the stroke of noon on Halloween."

"It's not as if Mum could help it," Percy said stuffily. "Errol had a spot of trouble on the way; some turbulence, it looks like--lost half the feathers on his right side--"

"And it's Errol, too," Fred finished, grabbing the knife their mum had included. "Have a slice, Perce, let's not let it go to waste."

"Hey--!" Percy protested as the cake was divvied up and passed into grateful hands (the third years were just coming back from Herbology). "That's Ginny's! Stop it, now!"

"She said she didn't want it," Fred said, with his mouth full. "Finders keepers, I say."

So by the time Ginny changed her mind and came back downstairs for a slice of her cake, all that was left was crumbs.


	5. Colin

__

(A/N) My sincerest apologies for not getting this out sooner. I know some of you have been impatient for the next installment, and I'll try and be more prompt after this. 

  


Colin

  


"You take that back!"

Ginny lifted her head, distracted for a moment from Tom. Colin Creevey was standing in front of a Hufflepuff boy who was about three times his size. His round little face was pink. "You take that _back!"_

"Why?" the Hufflepuff boy said, putting his hands on his hips. "S'only the truth."

"Is not!" Colin's face was bright red now. "He couldn't be!"

Who couldn't be what? But then Ginny thought, _Harry, of course._

"He's not! He's not! He's not the Heir of Slytherin!" Colin was roaring now, the volume incredible coming from that tiny little body. The entire class was staring, and Ginny almost hit herself in the forehead. The idiot!

"He was standing right in front of that cat, and the wall--bet you there was red paint under his fingernails, if anyone had thought to check!"

"If you say one more word," Colin squeaked, doubling up his fists (which could have fit whole into one of the Hufflepuff boy's nostrils) "I'll--I'll--I'll punch you in the mouth!"

There was a moment of silence, as the two combatants glared at each other. It was faintly ludicrous--Colin's head reached to about the other boy's waist. They were never to find out if Colin would have survived the encounter, because just then Professor Flitwick rushed in.

"What's this? What's this? Not fighting, are we, boys?"

"Professor Flitwick, he--"

"I was just--"

"--said that Harry Potter was--"

"--telling the truth, everyone's saying it--"

"--the Heir of Slytherin and he's not! Tell him he's not, Professor!"

"He is, and I'll--"

Professor Flitwick looked as if he wanted to have the argument over with. "Hush, hush, hush! It's past time for class to start! Sit down, sit down--"

"But Professor--!"

"Sit down, Mister Creevey, sit down, I say! This is not the place! You may work it out on your own time!"

Colin sat down slowly, his face still bright red from shouting, his chin stuck out so far she could have shelved books on it. Ginny poked him, hard.

"What?" he hissed, turning on her. Then he blinked at seeing who it was. She'd never spoken to him before.

"Are you that stupid?" she hissed back. "Can you really be that much of an idiot? What was all that screaming about?"

"I was defending him!" Colin growled. "Which is more than I saw you doing, even though your own brother's his very best friend in the whole world--"

"You numbskull, you've just made it worse!"

"What d'you mean, worse? I was standing up for him!"

"You made a big--bloody scene is what you did!" The situation merited some bad language, she felt, and besides, Mum wasn't here to hiss at her. "Nobody would have paid attention to that Hufflepuff if you hadn't taken him seriously!"

It was something she'd learned from Fred and George. Make a loud scene of denial, and people started reasoning that where there was smoke there was fire. Laugh someone out of the room, and you did more to undercut their assertions than any amount of screaming and yelling.

"Someone had to! Someone had to tell him--"

"_Mister Creevey!_ One more word out of you, and it will mean detention!" Professor Flitwick had his hands on his hips, and he was scowling darkly. "And the same to you, Miss Weasley! I mean it!"

Ginny, who had never yet seen the little Charms professor grow angry, clamped her mouth shut. Colin, apparently bested by the threat of detention (from Flitwick, yet!) did the same.

But Ginny's mood, as they practiced their Levitation charms, didn't improve. At the beginning of the year, she had been disposed to like Colin. He had wonderful taste in heroes, after all.

But then when she saw how it embarrassed Harry to be so blatantly worshipped, her opinion had fallen. Really, didn't Colin _realize?_ Signed photos--following him all over--practically having an apoplexy at the thrill of speaking to him--honestly! Ginny acknowledged to herself that she was a sad case, but at least she wasn't _obvious._

Not very.

Not too much.

Well--not as obvious as Colin! Because honestly, he was about as subtle as a short plank to the back of the skull.

At the end of the class, as people were gathering up their bags and trying to coax feathers down from the ceiling, Colin whispered, "Hey! Ginny!"

She looked over her shoulder. "What?" she asked coldly.

His expression was sheepish. "I--I reckon maybe you're right. I prob'ly shouldn't have made a scene. Sorry about--um--yelling, and all that." He held out his hand to shake. "Friends?"

Her dark mood shivered and wavered. Maybe--maybe if he was her friend, she could talk him out of taking all those pictures, and embarrassing Harry all the time--

"All--all right," she said hesitantly.

He grinned at her. "Want to go eat? I'm starved."

She smiled back. "All right."

  


* * *

  


Over lunch, he told her about his family. "I've got two little brothers, Dennis and Nigel," he said with his mouth full, "and a little sister, Myra. She 'n' Nige're twins. I'm the oldest."

"I'm the youngest," she said. "It's horrible."

"S'not so great being the oldest, either," he grumbled. "Always have to take care of everyone--"

"Never being allowed to do anything that everyone else is doing--"

"Have to set an _example_--" Colin sighed and swallowed a current bun whole. He washed it down with a fantastic chug of pumpkin juice, then burped. She hit his knuckles with a chicken bone. 

"You remind me of Myra," he told her. "She would've done that too. She was a surprise. Mum and Dad weren't wanting to have any more kids than three. Well, Nige was born and then--there was Myra! She didn't show up on the sonograms or anything--"

"What's a sonogram?"

"It's a sort of machine for looking at unborn babies," Colin explained with his mouth full.

"Oh, you mean like an Infansmira Charm?"

"You can do that with magic?"

"Oh, yeah." Imagine doing that by machine! Ginny tried to picture it and shuddered.

"Wow." Colin shook his head. "Bet it's better than the ones we have. Like I said, it didn't show Myra, so when Mum went into the hospital and out she came--bit of a shock for them. And a girl, too--there hasn't been a girl in our part of the family for about fifty years. . . . All my aunts and uncles said she was going to be spoiled rotten, a total brat."

"Is she?"

"A little, but she's really a good sort, is Myra. Likes sport a lot, and she always wins the burping contests."

Ginny shrugged. Burping contests were nothing new to her--Ron was the current champion in her family, although she'd come within seconds of tying him the last time. "Mum says any girl with a lot of brothers learns how to take care of herself." She made a face. "Bet none of them ever had brothers like mine, though."

He looked at her in surprise. "I like your brothers," he said. "Fred and George are really funny, and Percy's always looking after you."

"What about Ron?" she challenged.

He shrugged. "He must be a good sort too, or Harry wouldn't like him."

That much was true, Ginny had to admit.

"Hey!" Colin exclaimed, his mouth falling open so wide that she could see the remains of the last current bun. "D'you reckon my brothers and Myra're wizards too?"

"It's possible," she allowed. 

"Wow! Then they'll get to come here and see all this stuff--this is fantastic, living here. I have to pinch myself every morning to make sure it's true. That's why I take all those pictures," he confided, unembarrassed. "I send 'em home. Myra really liked the Quidditch pictures. Reckon she'd be good at it? Like Harry?"

She didn't know his sister; she couldn't say. "Maybe."

  


* * *

  


It was rather nice to have a friend. It was someone to eat with who wasn't Percy, at least. Tom was a little leery--**He probably wants to use you to get closer to Harry Potter, Ginny--**but she laughed at that. She was at least as removed from Harry as Colin was, if not more. Depressingly, he barely seemed to know she was alive. (Harry, not Colin. Colin certainly knew.) At any rate, there was no chance anyone could use her to get to him.

However, it _was_ a little embarrassing to be around Colin if Harry was around too--the camera clicked double-time, as Colin's entire body vibrated with excitement. Ginny was usually so busy blushing for him that she forgot to do more than a little mooning of her own.

"He's not a _superhero_ or anything," she tried to explain to Colin on the morning of the first Quidditch match of the year. "He visited my house over the summer. He's really regular--hates broccoli and left his socks inside-out and everything. All the rest is just sort of--bonus."

"He visited you? You're so _lucky_," Colin breathed.

Ginny couldn't decide whether to hit him or herself. But she couldn't blame him--Harry's story was like something right out of a fairy tale.

She was caught up for a moment, as they walked to the Quidditch pitch, in a lovely pink-tinged daydream starring Harry on a white horse, and herself the lovelorn princess in the tower. Naturally, he rescued her from her foul imprisonment and as he gently lifted her onto his horse (which was quite docile and well-behaved and didn't smell _at all_) he said . . . he said . . . 

"Looks like rain, d'you think?"

She snapped back to reality to see Ron just in front of her, squinting up at the sky.

"Harry can play in rain," Hermione told him, unruffled. "They've been practicing at all sorts of mad times, you know that."

So much for daydreams.

Colin took a picture of her, and she shrieked. "Stop that!"

"Kidding," he grinned. "I'm just excited." They'd had to pause in the milling crowd at the base of the stairs up to the stands. He was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. "Never--" bounce "--seen--" bounce "--a proper--" bounce "Quidditch match--" bounce "--before."

She giggled. "It's fun. My relatives had a game at the family reunion two years ago. It went on for a week."

"A whole _week?_ D'you think that'll happen here? Would we get to miss classes? Wow!"

"Colin, calm down!"

But once they got up into the stands, she was just as excited as Colin. They'd managed somehow to grab a seat at the front, where they could actually see, and she screamed and jumped up and down when the players marched out onto the field. Colin's camera clicked madly beside her.

Several minutes into the match, she noticed something that made her brows draw together. "Colin," she muttered. "Colin!"

He got another shot. "What?"

Her pinky finger slipped into her mouth, and she nibbled anxiously at the nail. "That Bludger--the one Harry just ducked--does it seem as if--it's _aiming?"_

"Aren't they supposed to do that?"

"No! They're supposed to knock anyone out who's closest, not follow someone around!" Ginny cringed as it narrowly missed Harry again, and moved on to her ring-finger nail. Fred and George were trying to keep it off him, but there were enough near misses to make her completely forget her resolution not to bite her nails.

After several hair-raising minutes, the captain called a time-out and Ginny squinted at the team. The captain, Fred, George, and Harry all seemed to be embroiled in some kind of argument. She hoped, ferociously, that her brothers were being told to keep that ruddy Bludger away from him.

Then they kicked off again, and to her horror, her brothers zoomed off in the opposite direction from Harry. She lost her head completely, leaning out over the rail to screech, "_What d'you think you're doing? Get back there, you idiots! Get back there!"_

She was hauled back from the railing by the back of her robe, and she turned around, snarling, to see Ron scowling at her. "Don't do that, stupid! Mum'd have our head if you fell off the Quidditch stands!"

She stomped on his foot and turned back around to see Harry swing completely around his broom to avoid the Bludger. "Colin! Did you see that!"

"Yeah! Got a great picture of it, too!"

Ginny wasn't even focused on the game, for maybe the first time in her life. She was too busy watching Harry. "Oh! No, don't--watch out! Ouuuhhh!" 

"Er, Ginny? You're--uh--hurting my arm."

Ginny looked down, then pried her fingers off Colin's wrist. The white outline of her fingers on his skin slowly turned red. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"S'all right," he said, flexing his wrist once or twice. "I imagine I'll be able to feel my hand again in a few days."

At that moment, Ron and Hermione both yelled, "Harry, don't--"

Ginny's head shot up, just in time for her to see the Bludger slam into Harry's elbow, with a sickening crunch. "Oh!" 

He reeled, but somehow stayed on his broom. But he was only hanging onto it with one hand, the other hanging very strangely at his side. It looked just like the time George had run into a tree on _his_ broomstick, and Ginny knew, with a horrible sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, that it was broken.

"Get to the ground, Harry, get to the ground!" she shrieked. The longer he was up there, the more chance the Bludger would have to go after him again, and one broken arm was quite enough for one day.

It was almost as if he'd heard her, for suddenly he hunched over his broomstick into a steep dive--

"Not _that_ way!" Had his glasses gotten knocked off? He was going to run right into Malfoy!

She was only half-aware of the way the screams and cheers from her fellow Gryffindors were doubling and redoubling. 

"He's going to ram him!" Ron howled delightedly. "Yeah, run him over, Harry!"

Furious at his lack of care for his _best friend's_ health, Ginny stomped on his foot.

"Owwwwww, what was that for?"

"His arm's broken, you silly fool!"

"It what? But--"

"Ron! He's got the Snitch!" Hermione squealed. "Look, he's got the Snitch! And--ohmygod--"

Ginny spun around. Harry was just collapsing into a heap of robes on the ground.

In all her life, she'd never known Ron to move so fast. He was halfway down the stairs before she could even lift one foot, Hermione close behind. 

"Come on, Colin, come _on!"_

They thundered across the Quidditch pitch several paces behind her brother and Hermione, dodging the Slytherin team, which was trying to land on them. Colin was yelping, "Myra's going to love this!"

Harry was still out cold, barely moving. Ron was trying to wake him up, and Hermione was nattering about some spell she couldn't quite remember. Ginny turned desperately. "Would somebody please--? Anybody!"

At that moment, she learned why you should be careful what you wish for. Professor Lockhart stampeded past her, glowing with the hope of attention. He shoved Ron aside to bend over Harry, and her brother thumped to his bum on the muddy ground. He glared fiercely at Lockhart, who didn't seem to notice.

Harry blinked once or twice, then groaned. "Oh, no, not _you_--"

"Doesn't know what he's saying!" Lockhart trumpeted to his audience. His teeth sparkled. "Not to worry, Harry, I'm about to fix your arm--"

Harry tried to roll away. "No, I'll keep it like this, thanks . . ."

_Click click clickety click _went Colin's camera. Harry wobbled to a slight angle long enough to say, "I don't want a photo of this, Colin!" then flopped over again.

But Colin lifted his camera again, and Ginny took it away from him. "Stop that! He told you not to!"

"Lie back, Harry," Lockhart was saying as the crowd around them thickened. "It's a simple charm I've used countless times."

"Why can't I just go to the hospital wing?"

Ginny thought this very sensible, but Lockhart didn't even listen to the team captain, who was saying the same thing. Instead, he flourished his wand. "Stand back--"

"No--don't--"

There was a sudden flash of light, and Harry's arm went limp. _Really_ limp. Quite frankly, a lot limper than any arm really ought to be . . . 

Ginny clapped her hands to her mouth. There was a round of gasps. Colin grabbed his camera back and starting clicking away again.

Harry's bones weren't broken anymore. But neither were they in his arm.

  


* * *

  


Hours later, Ginny was still angry. "Honestly! What did he think he was doing?"

They were sitting in the Gryffindor common room, among the debris of the victory party. Most of the Gryffindors had already gone to bed, but some hardy specimens, like Fred and George, were still up. 

Colin was polishing off a plate of food with the efficiency of a tornado. His camera, which by rights ought to have been smoking from all the use it had gotten that day, was sitting on the table at his side. "Madam Pomfrey'll take care of him," he told her thickly, accidentally spitting out a grape.

"I know that, but it would have been a lot easier all round if Lockhart hadn't gotten to him."

"Simmer down, Ginny," Colin coaxed. "He'll be okay in the morning, and Lockhart just looks stupid."

Ginny giggled. "Not that he needs help."

Colin laughed too. "I thought he was going to croak when he saw what he'd done--"

"And then Hermione Granger--'It was an _honest mistake!'_ Sure, if you're a total fool!" Ginny looked around quickly for Ron or Percy, both of whom would have yelled at her for that. But they'd gone to bed already. Percy didn't hold with criticizing teachers (even Snape!) and Ron wouldn't let anyone but himself make fun of Hermione Granger. Really, boys were so crazy sometimes!

Colin hopped to his feet. "I'm going to visit Harry. Coming?"

"Colin! It's the middle of the night!"

"So? Come on, it'll be fun."

Ginny hesitated, but shook her head. "I don't think so."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"All right--but I'll give him your love."

She shrieked and lobbed a bit of cheese at his head. "Don't you dare!"

He fielded the cheese expertly and grabbed up the last of his grapes. "I'm taking these too."

"What about your camera?" she asked, mostly joking.

"Oh, right!" He picked it up off the table where it sat. "Thanks, Ginny, I would've left it behind."

She had to laugh. "It's the middle of the night, Colin!"

"Never know what you might see," he said cheerily, and ducked out the portrait hole.

Shaking her head, Ginny went up to bed. She was still too excited to sleep, however, and sat up writing to Tom for a few minutes. She'd already told him all about the match, about the Bludger, about Harry's broken and then boneless arm, and now she wrote, _Colin went to visit him just now. I thought about going too, but I don't know--it's so late, and he might be asleep._

**Sure you're not afraid? **Tom teased her.

She blushed. _A little--well--I mean--that is . . . if I ever get the chance to talk to Harry, I'd like it to be on my own, and not with people about. Especially not Colin--he's very nice and all, but he does rather dominate a conversation. _She laughed to herself. _Anyway, it's late. I'd better go to sleep now, Tom. G'nite._

**G'nite, Ginny. Sweet dreams.**

__

She put the diary away and curled up under her covers, falling asleep right away.

And almost right away, she dreamt.

The voice of the Sorting Hat whispered in her ear the way it had her first night at Hogwarts. _Odd, very odd . . . I haven't seen a mind like this in five hundred years . . . a mind divided. One half, I'd send to Gryffindor--the other half, I'd send to Slytherin._

I want to be in Gryffindor, she'd thought very hard at it. _I want to be in Gryffindor!_

The hat's voice echoed through the dark tunnels of her dream. _A mind divided . . . a mind divided . . . a mind divided. . . ._

Darkness--slithery darkness, rushing past her, slime on her robes . . . 

****

"Speak to me, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four."

__

Her voice, and yet _not _hers . . . how?

A new voice, hissing alongside her ear. _Blood where is blood I want blood!_

Tunnels, tunnels, more tunnels, always tunnels . . . 

__

Look for blood let me tear let me rip let me kill let me let me letmeletmeletme

And then, quite suddenly a familiar hallway--a set of stairs--someone on the stairs, pausing and turning--

_Bloodbloodblood want blood NOW bloodbloodblood NOW bloodNOWNOW_

And a horrible clattering thud, as if a load of bricks had been dropped.

A howl of frustrated rage--_no blood? nooooo bloooooooooooood! Want blood!_

The not-her/her voice spoke again. **"Leave! Leave now! I command you to leave this place and go back to your nest!"**

__

Darkness again, tunnels again, slime and rushing wind again--

Falling . . .

_A mind divided . . ._

Falling . . . 

  


* * *

  


Ginny woke with a start.

The morning sun was streaming in through the tall windows, illuminating the aged wood of the floorboards with elongated copies of the patterns of ironwork on the glass. All the other beds were empty, the pillows askew and the blankets tumbled. All was very quiet and very still.

Ginny flopped back on her pillows. Such funny dreams--she frowned, trying to remember them, but they were seeping away like water through a sieve. _Just dreams,_ she thought drowsily. _Don't matter, just like Tom says._

Funny thing about it--she must have slept several hours, but she didn't feel rested. She felt as if she'd been running about all night. She sighed and curled up deeper into her covers. It was Sunday. She could be a regular sloth if she wanted.

Voices crept up the stairs through the half-open dormitory door. It was just everyone down in the common room, but there was an edge to the noise somehow--a shrill, panicky edge--

Curiosity trumped laziness. Sluggishly, Ginny got up and bundled herself in her wrapper. As she trudged down the stairs, she heard the voices more clearly.

"Completely--"

"--in the infirmary--"

"Just like Mrs. Norris!"

She froze, her foot just touching the next step down.

"And I heard his camera was _melted!"_

  


* * *

  


_Oh, Tom! A STUDENT got attacked this time!_

**Who?**

_It was Colin Creevey--_

**The Muggle-born who keeps taking pictures of Harry Potter?**

_Yes! He was going upstairs to see Harry in the hospital wing, and on the way, whatever happened to Mrs. Norris happened to HIM! _

**So it's happened again, has it?**

__

Yes, and oh, I feel so awful about it all, Tom! We were actually sort of starting to become friends, and now he's just lying there in the hospital wing, like a statue--

**But Ginny, you said yourself that he was really annoying. Maybe you're better off--**

__

He wasn't that bad, sometimes. I suppose I could have exaggerated a bit. And I really can't fault his taste, you know--couldn't--oh, Tom!

****

You can do better than that, Ginny, you know you can. After all, he was just the Muggle-born son of a milkman, and you said yourself he was an absolute laughingstock. Really, what advantage would it have given you? You have to be careful about who you make friends with. I'll tell you something I learned very young--this world's all about the people you know.

_I--suppose you're right_, Tom, Ginny wrote in small handwriting. It was true what he said, about people one knew. How many times had Mum wished that some of Dad's friends would help him out, so he wouldn't have to work so hard to support all of them? Her finger crept to her mouth, and she began to gnaw. _But it would have been nice to have a friend who was just a friend. Poor Colin! He even had his camera with him. It was all melted inside. What could have done that?_

**A very powerful and dangerous thing. It would have taken a great wizard to control it.**

_You think someone's doing this on PURPOSE??_

**Isn't that what everyone's saying?**

__

Some people, yes, but how could anyone be so nasty? Oh, Tom, I almost went with him! With Colin! I would have been Petrified too!

**But you're pure-blood. I think you would have been safe.**

_How can you be sure?_

**If it's the Heir of Slytherin, he'll be after Muggle-borns, won't he? Because that's who Slytherin hated, if I remember correctly. You're pure.**

_Yes, but--oh, it's all so confusing and frightening. I never thought Hogwarts was going to be like this. I thought it was going to be the time of my life here, because that's what Bill and Charlie and Percy and Fred and George and Ron have all said. But first it was just horrid and now it's awful!_


	6. The Dueling Club

  


The Duelling Club

  


Ginny was once again in the common room, curled up near the fire and watching the rest of Gryffindor tower at play. There had been some sympathy from Carmen and the other Gryffindor girls after Colin's Petrification, but she hadn't been fooled. It was all fake. None of them had been his friend while he was still around. Tom was right, she didn't need them.

So it was back to herself and Tom, just the way she liked it.

She glanced around for Fred and George, but they were involved in something over in a corner. They'd taken to putting on masks or hideous disguises and jumping out at her from dark corners lately--horrid, horrid brothers! Their wretched idea of fun . . . 

But for the moment, she was safe, since she could see them, and she put quill to paper._ I think I've figured out the problem._

****

What problem's that?

__

With Harry, of course! Why he never notices me!

****

Oh! Sorry--what is it?

__

I'm just not pretty enough.

****

Oh. You're right. That is a problem.

__

I mean, I've got this awful Weasley hair--bright orange! It's like my entire head is on fire! My eyes aren't so bad, I guess, but brown just doesn't GO with orange. It goes with brown or black hair much better, not orange. I--

A hideous face, purple with green spots, popped up over the side of her chair. "BOO!"

Ginny screamed so loud the entire common room went still. Then she saw the tuft of red hair peeking up over the top of the horrid mask. "_Fred_!" she wailed, whacking him with her diary.

Percy stormed over and grabbed Fred by the ear. He was bright red with fury, his freckles standing out like spots of ink. "All right, that's it, you two! No more of this stupid joke of yours! I'm going to tell Mum--"

The Gryffindors were in hysterics, some rolling on the floor. They were laughing at her!

Pink with humiliation, Ginny grabbed up her things and fled up the stairs, leaving Percy behind her, still dragging the twins across the room by their ears.

"But we just--ow, Percy, ow, ow!" 

"Perce, we--owwwwwwww!"

"No _more_, I said! Or I really am going to write Mum! Yes, and I'll tell her Ginny's having nightmares, you hear me?"

Fred and George blanched. Percy was nothing, but Mum was forever to be feared. "Is she?" George ventured.

"I wouldn't blame her if she did!" Percy stomped away, radiating righteous indignation.

Fred tossed the horrible mask at Lee Jordan, who was still laughing at their predicament. "See what happens when you try to be nice," he grumbled.

George, who could never resist a joke even if it was on him, started to laugh too. "Come on, Fred, give over!"

Fred began to chuckle. "Guess we did look a little silly being towed around by our ears . . ."

Abovestairs, Ginny had just finished lambasting her brothers, and had returned to the subject of her looks. _I look like a freak! And do you know what the worst part is?_

****

No, what?

__

I'm so skinny! It's that horrid Weasley metabolism--no matter how much I eat, I still look like a bundle of sticks held together with string. I mean, I've got NOTHING! I'm eleven whole years old, you'd think I'd have something by now, wouldn't you?

****

Uh--I--

__

I'm not just flat, I'm CONCAVE. I mean, I'm not asking to look like Hilda Nuttley in sixth year, but a few curves would be nice, at least.

****

Well--I can't help you with--um--the--that. But have you ever thought about enchanting your hair?

Ginny's hand flew up to touch a strand that lay over her shoulder. _My hair? You mean, to be another color?_

****

Yes. There's a charm, I think I remember--

__

That would be wonderful! That would be perfect! Maybe the rest wouldn't matter so much if my hair was a different color--tell me, what is it?

****

Mutacapilli. And then you have to specify the color you want it to change to. It works pretty well--stays on for quite awhile.

__

What color do you think?

****

Well--weren't there a few that went better with brown eyes? How about brown?

_Brown hair's nice enough, I suppose, but--_Then she thought of lovely Morgan Hoffmeister, whose long, long braid gleamed black as night in the sun. _Black_, she wrote dreamily. _Dark, dark black, that's even a little bit blue when the light hits it just right_.

****

Sounds good to me. That'll be really pretty.

_I'm going to the bathroom to do it so I can see in the mirror. This is going to be fantastic! I'm going to stun everyone!_

  


* * *

  


Well, she was going to stun everyone, all right.

Through the film of tears in her eyes, Ginny stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her hair--her awful, awful hair--! Even orange would have been better than this. She tried stuffing it up under her hat, but the edge of her hairline still showed quite clearly. 

Tom had been so penitent, and so sweet about apologizing. **Honestly, I didn't remember until too late that you had to specify your original hair color too! I feel terrible.**

_Isn't there a countercharm?_ she'd scribbled, snuffling tears away.

**I can't remember it right now, and I've been trying for ages, ever since I realized. I'll keep on trying. I am horribly sorry.**

__

I know you are. It's not your fault. It's mine for being stupid.

No countercharm, no chance of hiding it . . . she didn't even have a handy Invisibility Cloak to wrap around herself. There was no help for it. She was going to have to face the common room precisely as she was.

She took off her hat and watched her horrible hair cascade down around her shoulders. She almost burst into tears again, but she swallowed hard and wiped her eyes. She was _not_ going to cry in front of everybody.

But it took all she had to descend the stairs with her chin high and her eyes dry. 

As usual, the common room was teeming with noise and activity. But as she progressed through the crowd, her teeth gritted, silence spread out like a ripple in a pond.

Mouths gaped.

Eyes popped.

Fingers pointed.

She pretended not to notice any of it. 

It was just as she was marching by Harry's usual table that a voice said, "Er--Ginny?"

She stopped and looked over at her brother, who was staring at her with enormous, stunned eyes. "Yes, Ron?" she said stiffly.

"Your--er--hair, Ginny. It's a bit--"

She crossed her arms. _"Yes?_" Her voice just dared him to make some sort of joke.

"Um--purple."

__

A bit purple was probably the understatement of the year. It was brilliant violet, luminous to the point of glowing. All the brightness of her original hair had come through, and none of the beauty she'd been hoping for.

But she couldn't let anyone see how genuinely humiliated she was. "I'm--aware--of--that," she said dangerously. "Is that all?" A quick glance told her that Harry's mouth was hanging open so far she could have put her entire hand in it.

Ron fumbled, "Just--uh--wanting to check that you knew."

"I do know." With a disdainful sniff, and a flick of her vibrantly, brilliantly, immutably purple hair, she hitched her bag up on her shoulder. "And if you don't mind, I'm going to class."

She did a sharp right-face and marched towards the portrait hole. 

Another voice intruded just as she'd almost reached her goal. "Um--Ginny?"

She turned her head to look Hermione Granger in the eye. "Yes?" she said frostily.

"Would you--like a bit of help, changing it back? I'm sure I've seen books in the library--"

"I don't need any help, Hermione." With another sniff, she pushed the portrait hole open and climbed out, fighting to maintain her stiff dignity.

Just before the hole closed all the way, she heard the entire room explode into gales of laughter. Her dignity failed her, and she fled down the hall.

  


* * *

  


For the next few days, she avoided the Great Hall when it was full, only slipping in very early or very late for every meal and eating as quickly as she could. But that was about all she could do, aside from ramming her hat as far down on her head as she could while in the halls. Even so, a trail of whispers and giggles inevitably followed her to every class and accompanied her as she tried to take notes.

Fred and George were horrible. "Purple hair! How'd you do it, Wee One?"

"Yeah, we're going to try it on Snape! See how he'll like that--"

"D'you think you could enchant yourself some glowing red eyes to go with that?"

"That'll make you stand out from the crowd!"

Ron got after her for her rudeness to Hermione. "She was just trying to help--I can't believe you sometimes--"

She stared at him in disbelief. "I'm sorry, is this the same brother who spent the entire summer holidays telling us how bossy she was? And you called her a know-it-all right to her face last week! What's _that_ if not rude?"

Ron's face contorted, his struggle clear. "Yeah--but--but--I'm allowed! I'm her friend!"

"Funny kind of friend, if you ask me," she muttered after he'd left.

Percy was the worst. "Serves you right," he said loftily. "What's wrong with your hair, I'd like to know, that you had to go and turn it purple?"

"I wasn't meaning to!"

"Red hair serves all of us perfectly fine--you don't see _me _running about with hair like a paint-box, do you?"

"Only because the twins haven't got to you yet," she sniped.

"What!?"

The professors' reactions were varied. Professor Sprout asked her kindly if she'd like one of the enormous flowery gardening hats that hung on pegs in Greenhouse One. (Ginny turned it down. They were almost worse than her hair, and she'd only have to take it off again at the end of class.) Professor McGonagall, after a startled blink, took one look at her stiff, set face and never mentioned it. Neither did Snape, but every time he looked at her, his lips curled up in a nasty, mocking smirk. Professor Binns, of course, never noticed a thing.

On Thursday, Professor Flitwick scurried into class a few moments late. Clambering up on his pile of books, he called out, "Good day, class, good--" His eyes landed on Ginny, who had her hands fisted in her lap and her head bowed, so her stunning hair fell in front of her face. He choked on his words. "Ah--Miss Weasley?"

She lifted her face. She was sure she was white to the lips. "Yes, Professor?"

"Ah--see me after class, would you, Miss Weasley?"

Probably going to give her a talking-to for trying out charms on her own, Ginny decided gloomily. "Of course, Professor," she said in a hollow voice.

After class, she stayed in her seat, dreading the expected scolding.

Professor Flitwick, his eyes on level with her own, approached. "Miss Weasley--"

"Yes, Professor," she mumbled.

"Trying to change your hair, were you? Did you use Mutacapilli?"

"Yes, sir."

"What color?"

She lifted her eyes for a moment. "Black."

His bushy white brows rose. "Black, eh? D'you mean the kind that's almost blue?"

She nodded guiltily.

"Probably the blue that did it."

"I know," she mumbled.

The professor sighed, rocking back on his heels. "About when did you try this?"

"Tuesday," she muttered.

"What time of day?"

Why all the strange questions? "Just after lunchtime."

"Well--let's see. Give it until tomorrow, after lunchtime, and then come to me. We'll set it to rights."

Ginny's head snapped up. "D'you mean--" she gasped, "d'you mean you'll change it _back_ for me?"

"Can't have you going around with purple hair for the next year or so, can we?" He smiled at her from under his brows.

She felt the delighted grin stretching her mouth, but she had to ask, "Can't you do it now?"

"What? Oh, no, no, no--you never know what could happen! You could lose all your hair, not just the color."

Ginny gasped and clapped her hands protectively over her head. Just because she hated the original color didn't mean she wanted to go around _bald_.

Professor Flitwick nodded. "Tricky things, cosmetic charms. Have to settle for about seventy-two hours before they can be altered again."

"You must think I'm terribly stupid," she whispered, toying with her unnatural hair.

"Oh, no, no--we get a few every year. Now let me think--was it last year? No, must have been the year before. There was a Hufflepuff boy--seven-stone weakling, as you might call him. Tried to give himself muscles like Hercules. I think he wanted to attract the attention of some pretty little thing from Ravenclaw."

"What happened?" Ginny asked, fascinated in spite of herself.

"Poor old Diggory wound up like a blimp--puffed out in every direction! We had to wait a week to deflate him." Professor Flitwick shook his head again. "Madam Hooch took him under her wing--he's a Quidditch player now. Got muscles that are bit more natural." He winked. "And of course, there's always a few, every year, that try to curse their spots off and wind up losing a nose, or an ear instead . . ."

Ginny giggled. At least _her_ face still had all the bits it was supposed to.

"Like I say, see me after lunchtime tomorrow. We'll have it back to normal."

As she gathered her things up, happy for the first time in three days, something occurred to Ginny. "Couldn't you--turn it black for real?"

"Ah--I think you'd better stay away from cosmetic charms for a few years, Miss Weasley. At least until you learn how to work them."

  


* * *

  


With her hair once again properly orange, Ginny vowed not to try anything new with her appearance, at least magically. _Because you never know WHAT could happen. Professor Flitwick was ever so nice about it, but those were three days I wouldn't want to repeat in a hurry._

**I know exactly what you mean.**

She did, however, spend hours trying to fix her hair in a more flattering style. Unfortunately, the only ones who noticed her lovely French braid were Fred and George, who pulled it every time they walked behind her.

She gave up.

_I don't know what I'm going to do, I honestly don't. And anyway, who can worry about hair when all this stuff is going on?_

****

Are people still talking about Harry and the cat?

__

A little. They're even saying now that he went after Colin because Colin annoyed him with his camera! As if that could ever--I mean to say, he was in the infirmary, regrowing thirty-three bones in his right arm! How could he have done ANYTHING?

****

You don't have to convince me! But you know what people are like, they'll believe anything . . . 

__

And everyone is so crazy and paranoid!

Apparently, the teachers realized that too. The third week of December, a notice for a Dueling Club was pinned up in the entrance hall.

_How is this supposed to make everyone feel better? _she asked Tom indignantly. _Teaching them how to duel is just going to make them start dueling!_

**Think about it a moment--if you were a teacher, would you rather have students dueling any which way and any which place, or in a room where you could watch?**

_Oh. I guess you're right. I didn't think of it that way._

**Teachers are easy to predict. Are you going to do it?**

_I think I will--what with everything that's been happening around here, it might come in handy. Besides, if I know how to duel, maybe I can get my brothers to leave me alone._

**There used to be a Dueling Club when I was at Hogwarts**, Tom told her.** I had a lot of fun--I happened to be really good at it. I miss it, actually. Come back and tell me everything.**

  


* * *

  


Professor Lockhart slapped Harry on the back and said cheerily, "Just do what I did, Harry!"

"What, drop my wand?"

Ginny had to muffle her giggle. So far, the Dueling Club hadn't been the most informational of half-hours, although it had been worth it to see Lockhart get knocked off his feet by Snape's _Expelliarmus_ spell. Handy, that. She'd have to remember it.

She swallowed hard as Harry faced off with his partner, who just happened to be that horrid Malfoy who'd been at Harry back in Flourish and Blott's, before the beginning of term. They'd been set to duel by Snape, and Ginny didn't like the cold, calculating look in the blond boy's eyes one little bit.

Lockhart, beaming stupidly, counted off. "One--two--three--go!"

"_Serpensortia!_" With a bang, a gigantic black snake spurted from the end of Malfoy's wand and hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Oh _god!_ Ginny almost fell flat on her behind, jolting away from the horrible thing. It was huge, monstrous, the biggest snake she'd ever seen in her life. It lifted its head and hissed, and a tiny scream escaped her mouth, lost in the cacophony around her.

"Don't move, Potter," Snape said, and he didn't even sound concerned. "I'll get rid of it . . ."

Sure he would--when it had bitten Harry's _head_ off or something. . . . For a moment, Ginny's fury overcame her fear, and she glared at the back of Snape's greasy head. 

"Allow me!" Lockhart shouted, like the bleeding _idiot_ he was. Predictably, all his stupid spell did was hurl the snake into the air and let it fall back to the ground right in front of a dark-haired boy who was only a few feet away from Ginny.

The snake rose the front half of its body up in the air, opening its mouth and hissing, displaying its fangs--

Ginny was too petrified to even cover her eyes.

But then Harry darted forward, raising his wand. "Leave him!" he shouted at the snake, and, incredibly, it listened, turning away from the boy and relaxing to the floor, its shining eyes fixed on Harry.

Ginny almost applauded.

"What do you think you're playing at?" the boy shouted at Harry, and then turned and stomped out of the Great Hall. 

Ginny's mouth fell open. The horrible--ungrateful--well! Couldn't he--didn't he--?

"What was _that_?" someone by Ginny asked. "It sounded funny--all hissy--was that even English?"

"Parseltongue," someone else almost snarled. "Harry Potter is a Parselmouth."

Ginny's stomach turned to ice.

She hadn't heard anything but plain English--but everyone else had obviously heard some weird hissing sorts of sounds--which meant--

She herself was a Parselmouth.

  


* * *

  


When she tore through the Gryffindor common room on her way upstairs to Tom, she saw Ron and Hermione talking in low, intense voices to Harry, who was slumped in an armchair, looking as sick as she felt.

_Oh, Tom! _she wrote moments later. _This is terrible--Parseltongue is such a Dark Arts thing, and neither Mum or Dad ever said anyone in our family had it--I've never heard of anyone nowadays but--but--HIM having it._

**But maybe Parseltongue isn't such a horrible talent. It's not a Dark thing itself, is it?**

_No . . . not as such . . . but you know how You-Know-Who was a Parselmouth, and so was Salazar Slytherin . . ._

**What's so bad about being able to talk to snakes? I think it would come in handy occasionally, myself.**

_Maybe it'll go away. I've never been able to do it before, not even that one time Ron put a whole nest of garter snakes in my bed. _

**A lot of funny things happen to wizards around your age. Abilities pop up quite a bit. Usually they keep them.**

_Keep it? I don't WANT to keep it! What do I do?_

**Don't tell anyone about it. You said everyone was whispering about Harry Potter already, because he gave himself away, and you hardly need that. Think what your parents would say.**

_You're right. You're always right. Tom, dear Tom, you always know what to say._

**Thank you. I do try.**

_  


* * *

  
****_

The next day, her news was almost worse than the Parseltongue.

__

There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Ginny hesitated, wondering if she should tell him of the horrible suspicion lurking away in a corner of her mind. It was so mad, however, that she only said, _It's so strange. Every time there's an attack, I don't really know where I was when it happened._

****

I'm sure it's just your mind playing tricks on you. 

_But what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad! I don't know how I keep losing myself all the time. Do you think there's something wrong with me? Should I go to Madam Pomfrey?_

**But what could she possibly do?**

_I--don't know._

**Best not to tell anyone. You don't want people to think you're really crazy, do you?**

_No, of course not. _

****

Well then. What happened? Today, when the people were attacked?

_Well, nobody knows really, of course. But Harry found them, and it's so awful--everyone's whispering about him already, after yesterday. He almost tripped over them in the corridor. It was that Hufflepuff boy that he saved from the snake and--oh, you'll never believe this--Nearly Headless Nick! Both petrified! _

**Not the Gryffindor ghost?**

__

Yes! Who could do something like that to a GHOST? He's already dead! 

**It is a terribly powerful, dangerous thing. I should like to meet the wizard controlling it.**

__

You may, but I don't--he must be as Dark as You-Know-Who himself, to be able to this, and then to do it to innocent students-- Ginny paused, appalled at her own words and what they meant to her growing suspicions.

But then Tom said, **Oh, Ginny, they're only Mudbloods.**

_TOM! _

**What? It's just a word . . . **

__

That's a HORRIBLE word! Dad said if he ever caught us saying it, for any reason at all, no matter who we were saying it to, he'd take away our wands and toy brooms and everything for months and months--

**I'm sorry. I suppose it was a little bit more acceptable when I was at school.**

_Oh--well, I guess you didn't know any better. But I'd still like it if you wouldn't use it any more._

**I'll try to remember that.**


	7. Christmas

  


Christmas

  


_Tom! It's Christmas!_

**I know! Happy Christmas! What did you get?**

_Nothing very good. A jumper as usual from Mum, a Muggle book from Dad--_

****

What's the title?

__

Emma, I think. It looks boring. I've stuffed it in my trunk. I don't know why Dad keeps getting me books like that. Oh, and Fred and George gave me Cockroach Clusters--eurrrrgh. 

****

Anything else?

_Well--Percy gave me a nice new bundle of quills, and Ron gave me a couple of Chocolate Frogs. One of the cards is Morgan le Fay--listen to this._ She copied the card down. "_Morgan le Fay is known in Muggle legend as a evil sorceress, twisting good Arthur to her own wicked ends. However, she is credited with numerous magical discoveries, not the least of which is the Bubble-head Charm which, enlarged, enabled her to build a castle under a lake, and much of her bad press seems to have originated with Merlin, with whom she had a number of disagreements of philosophy. This proves yet again that nothing is what it seems." Isn't that brilliant, Tom? I'd love to live under a lake!_

****

But then you wouldn't be able to see Harry every day . . . 

_Oh, don't tease,_ she ordered lightly. _What did you used to do for Christmas?_

It was a moment before he wrote back. **It wasn't celebrated very much at the orphanage. We got . . . things from the parish. Usually clothes.**

Ginny didn't even need to be told that the clothes had been ill-fitting and badly made, the kind of things one donated to an orphanage because nobody else could want them. There was something about his handwriting that told her. _I'm sorry, Tom._

**It's long gone, anyway. Water under the bridge. And Christmas was much nicer when I got to Hogwarts. I always liked the feasts.**

_The feast!_

**Are you late?**

__

No, but I will be in a moment--I'll talk to you later!

**Have a good time!**

She shut the diary up and slipped it in her pocket. Footsteps thudded on the stairs, and Harry came into the dormitory. 

"'Lo, Ginny," he said. 

Her mouth fell open. "Hngh?"

"Merry Christmas," he added.

"Hrnk," she squeaked.

More footsteps, and Hermione came into the room, just slipping something into her pocket. "Where's Ron?" she asked Harry.

"Right here," came Ron's irritated voice. "Had to put on my stupid Weasley jumper, didn't I." He made a face, yanking at the cuffs of his new maroon jumper. 

"I like your mum's jumpers," Harry said peaceably. He was wearing his, green with festive red around the collar and cuffs. It was loads better than hers, which was just plain white.

"Yeah, Ronniekins, listen to the Heir of Slytherin."

"Many a fanged servant would be grateful for such a warm jumper, I'll tell you."

Would the twins never leave off? Nobody would ever forget about this Heir of Slytherin business if they kept yelling around like that. "Stop talking such rubbish," Ginny snapped. "He's no such thing!"

That was a mistake--it only brought the twins' attention to bear on her. "What's the matter, Wee One?"

"Don't fancy being a Queen of Evil?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Harry's face go a little red. Ron said loudly, "Shut up, Miss Mouthy. Come _on_, Harry, everything's going to be eaten already!" He tugged Harry toward the portrait hole that Hermione had standing open. 

The twins followed, calling out, "Merry Christmas, King of Evil!" and other such witticisms.

Ginny grabbed up a pillow from her armchair and screamed into it. Her brothers ruined _everything!_

  


* * *

  


She went so far as to ask Percy to get Ron to stop making fun of her, with his stupid little "Miss" names, and he told her loftily, "If you're going to be a Weasley, Ginny, you'll have to take some of this teasing."

"That's not what you said when Fred and George were jumping out at me," she pouted, poking at her Christmas pudding.

"That was _completely_ inappropriate, of course, but really, there's no way I can stop any of them doing what comes naturally."

"It doesn't come naturally to _you_."

"I'm much more mature than they are," he said, with an expression of almost constipated self-importance. "I can try to stop them, but I can't follow you around. You'll just have to develop a tough skin for this kind of thing, Ginny."

"Fine kind of brother you are," she muttered, taking herself and all the contents of her Christmas crackers away.

  


* * *

  


It was evening before she saw Harry and Ron again. She was curled up in her favorite chair, telling Tom about her wretched Christmas, when they climbed in through the portrait hole--alone.

Fred and George glanced up from their Exploding Snap game. They'd tried to trick Ginny into playing, but she knew how outrageously they cheated, and had refused. "Hey, where you been?" Fred called out.

"Around," Ron said vaguely.

"Where's Hermione?" George asked.

"Infirmary," Harry said shortly, and ran up the stairs to the dormitory with Ron right behind him.

Ginny snatched up her diary. _Tom! _she scribbled with a shaking hand. _Hermione Granger is in the infirmary! She must have gotten Petrified!_

**That Mud--sorry--Muggle-born friend of your brother's?**

_Yes, but--I know exactly where I was! The whole day, I didn't have any blackouts! I feel bad of course, because she IS Harry's friend and all even though I don't like her much--but oh! if you only knew what I was starting to wonder!_

**I _am_ your diary--tell me!**

_I can't just at this moment--I've GOT to run up and see if it's really true--talk to you later!_

  


* * *

  


Her mood had shifted one hundred and eighty degrees half an hour later. She flopped stomach down on her bed and dragged the diary out of her pocket, blindly reaching for the inkwell that sat on her bedside table. 

__

Tom?

****

I'm here.

__

I was wrong! Hermione didn't get attacked at all!

****

But I thought you said she was in the hospital wing?

__

She is, but she's not Petrified. She just almost turned herself into a cat, that's all.

****

Oh--how did she do that?

__

I don't know--I don't care! This is horrid! I thought I'd proven myself wrong and then--

****

But proven yourself wrong about what?

Ginny put her free hand to her mouth as she wrote. _I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!_

**You're what?**

It's awful--but I really think I am! Honestly! I can never remember where I was, and I've been having all these funny dreams--

**Now look, being rather absent-minded and having odd dreams doesn't automatically mean you're opening the Chamber of Secrets! I think you're blowing this out of proportion.**

__

No, I really think I am! I don't know how and I don't know why--but it's just been since I came HERE that I've been like this! And the snake that I understood . . . am I becoming a Dark witch?

**No, no, no, of course you're not! You can't possibly--**

She began to cry in earnest. _Why are you dismissing me like this?_

**I'm not dismissing you, I promise I'm not!**

_I thought you were my friend--_

**And I'm _being _a friend by being a voice of reason! You're a first-year witch! How could you possibly find and operate the Chamber of Secrets--especially when you're sleepwalking?**

_I don't know--but how could I possibly become a Parseltongue? There's such a lot of impossible things happening around here, and I don't know anything for sure anymore!_

**I don't think becoming a Dark witch is something you do involuntarily--**

_How do YOU know? You were never Dark, were you? There might be Dark witches and wizards all over the place in my family, only they never talk about them. Mum's second cousin--_

**What, the accountant? The one you've never--**

_That's what they SAY._ _What if the real reason is because he was a Parseltongue? What if he turned DARK??_ Her quill pressed deeper and deeper into the page with every word she wrote. _What if he did HORRIBLE things right there next to YOU-KNOW-WHO??? What if he's in AZKABAN???? What if he's stark raving MAD????? WHAT IF I'M JUST LIKE HIM??????_

**GINNY! You're being overly melodramatic! Calm down, you're not doing yourself any good with screaming!**

She slapped her quill down and took several deep breaths. The soft in-out whoosh of air had a calming effect, and after a moment, she was able to write back, in meek copperplate very unlike the former agitated scrawl, _I'm sorry, really I am. But I honestly do think--_

**Couldn't there be another explanation?**

_But I've tried! I've tried and tried and tried--_

****

Why didn't you tell me about this before? I could have helped you out . . . 

_I didn't WANT to, don't you see? If I write it down, that makes it real!_

**What are you going to do?**

__

I don't know. I've got to watch myself like a hawk, because I couldn't live with myself if I ever did this again . . . I can barely live with myself now.

**You aren't going to do anything foolish, are you? Like telling anyone besides me?**

_I couldn't tell anyone besides you! I might get kicked out of school! What would Mum and Dad say then?_

**I just wanted to make sure.**

Ginny felt her throat close up. He was so sweet, worrying about her. _How can I make this go away?_

**I don't know. It's quite serious. At least you haven't killed anyone yet . . . **

Ginny's mouth sprang open. _Do you think I could?_

**No! No, no, of course not,** he wrote quickly. 

_Then why did you say it?_

****

I was just pointing out that it could be worse. You're just turning people to stone, and they'll be revived eventually. It's not _near_ as bad as if you'd killed them.

Ginny cheered up a little. _I suppose you're right there. Will you help me guard myself?_

**Of course. What are friends for?**

_I am going to have to be VERY careful, _she wrote with a sigh. _Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and not myself--I think he suspects me._

  


* * *

  


For two weeks, Ginny existed in a kind of coiled-spring state of guardedness. She set up stacks of books and loud clattery things by her bed, on both sides and on the end, so she couldn't climb out in the night without waking herself or somebody else. When she ran out of noise-makers, she put down things that would be extremely painful to step on. There was one memorable occasion, early on in the two weeks, when she was half-asleep and wanted to go to the loo, that she woke the entire tower up. 

When the other Gryffindor girls, crabby and incredulous, asked her what in blazes she was doing, she told them she was trying to stop herself sleepwalking. It didn't do anything for her popularity among the other girls, but she was in no shape to care about that.

There were great circles under her eyes, and she was paler every time she looked into the mirror. She had almost entirely stopped eating, which didn't do a thing for her oft-bemoaned lack of curves. 

When he saw her lack of appetite, Percy hustled her to Madam Pomfrey for another humiliating dose of Pepper-Up Potion, which she took without complaint (forgetting that this was much more likely to arouse Percy's suspicions than anything else).

She managed to be civil to the teachers, but only just. Her classmates stopped talking to her completely. All her brothers, even Fred and George, started to avoid her for fear of having their nose bitten off if they so much as said "Hello."

Her grades dove like Harry on the Quidditch field. Her nails were chewed down to the quick, and she was starting in on the hangnails. Her nerves could have strung an entire violin section.

But there were no more attacks.

  


* * *

  


Charms class was one that she was still managing to keep her head above water, although not by much. Ever since the incident of the purple hair, Professor Flitwick had been very kind and encouraging.

"You're quite good at Charms, you know," he told her after class one day. "You've got a knack for them."

Any other time, she would have brightened under the praise, but now she just said, rather dully, "Thank you."

"You just need to concentrate," he added. "I really don't want to have to fail such a talented student, but I mayn't have a choice."

"I know," she said.

He patted her hand. "All right then. Off to lunch with you."

She started gathering up her things, then paused as something occurred to her. It wasn't all that important, but she was suddenly curious. "Professor Flitwick, what's the Cruciatus curse?"

The effect on him was electric. He went as white as his hair and actually tottered a few steps backward before squeaking, "_Miss Weasley_! Where did you hear of _that_?"

She'd automatically reached out to steady him. "From a--someone mentioned it, I suppose--"

He mopped his brow with a shaking hand. "I should seriously reconsider associating with anyone who would _just mention _the Cruciatus curse, Miss Weasley," he said, his normally squeaky voice higher than ever. 

"But--but what does it do that's so bad?" Ginny wanted to believe it had been some sort of mistake on Tom's part or that, like the Mudblood issue, ideas had changed since he'd been in school.

The professor leaned against one of the desks for a moment, then mopped his brow again. In the same voice he used for his classroom lectures, he informed her, "It is one of the three curses known as the Unforgiveables. They were much favored by You-Know-Who and his followers and used extensively during their rise to power. Just using one of them against another person is enough to land one in Azkaban for life." In spite of his detached words, he was still very white. "The Cruciatus is, relatively speaking, the mildest of them. It causes the victim to suffer the most excruciating pain imaginable until such time as their--torturer chooses to release them."

Ginny felt all the blood drain out of her own face. Tom had mentioned it so casually, almost jokingly-- "It sounds terrible," she said faintly.

"It has been known to drive victims mad." His voice lost its lecturing tone and sank to a near-whisper. "Death is a mercy, when one is in its grips." Professor Flitwick mopped his brow again. "And now, Miss Weasley, I think you'd better get to lunch--dear me--" He tottered away, still white as parchment.

Ginny had to sit down at her desk again. Her legs were shaking.

She looked down at her bag, with the diary resting in the front pocket. She started to reach for it, to ask, and then hesitated. _I should seriously reconsider associating with anyone who would _just mention_ the Cruciatus Curse._

Maybe, like her, he didn't really know what it was or what it did, and had only heard of it in passing . . .

Her hand hovered uncertainly over the front pocket for several seconds before she shifted direction and clasped the strap instead. She could always talk to him about it later, anyway.

"Hey, what are you doing in here?"

Ginny looked up. Jeremy Markham, another first-year Gryffindor she rarely had much to do with, stood scowling at her in the doorway. "You're supposed to be at lunch," he told her.

"So are _you_," she snapped, and he stepped back, blinking. Like a lot of Gryffindors, he'd long ago dismissed her as a ghostly figure attached to her diary, and it was like having a beetle bite off one's toe to hear her talking back.

"I left my quills here," he said, going to his desk and retrieving them. "What's your excuse?"

"I was asking Professor Flitwick about something." She marched past him, and he ran to catch up.

"You shouldn't walk about alone. There's so much funny stuff going on--"

Ginny thought, _I'm not in any danger, now am I? _and wanted to cry again. Her voice was more acidic than she'd meant it to be when she snapped, "Neither should you."

He made a face at her. "I can take care of myself."

"And I can't?" she asked. Her voice would have made any big brother worth his salt cringe and deny it until he was blue in the face, but Jeremy had no sisters, and not much of a danger instinct.

"You're just a girl, and--"

"_And?_"

"And you can't--" Jeremy's instincts kicked in belatedly, and he trailed off. "Er--uh--I mean. . . ."

"Can't what?"

"Uh--I'll walk back with you, shall I?"

She rolled her eyes. "Thanks ever _so_ much, but _no."_

He stiffened, insulted. "Fine--see if _I_ care when you get Petrified--" and he marched off towards the Great Hall.

_Fat chance, _Ginny thought darkly. Her appetite was now completely gone, but she made her way to the Great Hall anyway. The last thing she needed was for a teacher to come around asking questions.

As she mooched along, gently kicking at the stones of the floor, she wondered for the thousandth time how she was doing it.

And why.

_I mean, the first time it was Mrs. Norris, _she told Tom as she sat at the Gryffindor table, nibbling halfheartedly on a bun, _and she was so unpleasant--she'd scratched me and everything--I suppose I might've WANTED her to turn to stone . . . _

****

I suppose that's true . . . 

_And that Hufflepuff boy--I was mad at him for yelling at Harry, and maybe Nearly Headless Nick was just sort of . . . in the way . . . _

**Considering what he'd done, I'd say the Hufflepuff deserved it . . . go on.**

_But Colin! Why would I have ever--?_

**He was annoying, remember? He was taking pictures of Harry--**

_But we were getting to be friends--_

**Were you? Or was he just the only one that ever sat with you?**

Ginny hesitated, horribly unsure. It had only been a few days of tentative friendship, when all was said and done. Maybe she had been more annoyed with him than she thought. Maybe she'd decided to get rid of him, somewhere in that part of her that knew how to do . . . what she did . . . 

She buried her face in her arms for a moment, then lifted her head to write, _Oh, why can't I go back to the beginning of the year and start all over again?_

  


* * *

  


It was Percy's birthday, and Ginny was very, very confused.

Except for yelling at the twins for giving him a quill that squirted ink in his face, Percy looked perfectly happy and cheerful, which she couldn't understand. He hadn't got his cake yet! Just like her! Was something the matter with Mum this year?

After he'd left the common room on some mysterious errand of his own, Ginny sidled over to Ron. Harry had just left for practice, so Ginny's tongue was actually working. "I don't understand Percy at all. Mum forgot again, didn't she?"

Ron looked up from his Chocolate Frog cards. "Again? What are you on about?"

"His cake!" Ginny said, plopping down on an armchair.

"Percy's--what, his _birthday_ cake?"

Fred, dressed for practice, poked his head over the top of her chair. "You're not thinking we actually get our cakes on the precise day of our birthday when we're here, do you?"

She looked up at him. "Um--well, I--"

"Oh, you prat," George said, sitting on the arm of her squashy chair. "You did."

She burrowed herself deeper into the armchair. "I--"

Fred sat on the other arm. "It's a flaming _day's_ journey from here to home, Wee One, even for a train."

George picked up. "And we know Mum gets up at the crack of dawn to bake it and send it off--"

"Don't forget, we watched her do it every year for Bill and Charlie and Percy before we ever came."

"But it's still an awful long way. Plus there's weather and all that."

Ron added, "And well--Errol, you know."

"Yeah. Errol," George said, sighing and shaking his head.

"Anyway," Fred continued, "we've never got our birthday cakes on our birthdays since we've been here."

"What--_never_?" she asked faintly.

All three brothers shook their heads. "No, wait," Fred said. "Charlie told me once that his cake did come on his birthday back in his third year. Errol was younger then, and the weather was really good--but it was still almost midnight when he got here."

George asked, "How long did you wait last year, Ron?"

"A week," Ron said. "But it was still good when it got here. Mum's Preservative Charms are almost as good as her baking," he added proudly.

Fred leaned forward. "It's the Great Weasley Secret, y'see," he imparted solemnly. "Started with Bill--"

"Down through Charlie--"

"To Perce--"

"And then you and me--"

"And they told me last year," Ron finished. "We never tell Mum. You know how she is about birthday cakes--"

The twins quoted in unison, "'A cake's just a cake unless it's made on your birthday.'"

"And--well--nobody ever wanted to hurt her feelings."

"Ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," Ginny wailed, covering her face.

Fred said, "Is this why you didn't want any of your cake in November, Wee One?"

She nodded, feeling her skin heat.

"Ron! Didn't you _tell_ her?"

"She wasn't talking to me!" Ron defended himself. "I thought Percy would--"

"I am in the room, you know," Ginny said from behind her hands, "and it's _you_ who weren't talking to _me--"_

"Never mind that," George said. "You really thought she'd _forgotten_ your birthday?"

Another nod.

"Vir_gin_ia! Don't you have any more faith in Mum than that?"

A hand clamped around her knee, and she peeked through her fingers. Ron was giving her a ferocious look. "You didn't write a nasty letter about this to Mum, did you?"

"No," she whispered. She'd been too hurt and furious to write Mum at all.

All three of her brothers relaxed. "The Secret's safe, then," Fred said, wiping his brow in an imaginary ecstasy of relief.

Ron was still tetchy. "How could you think that? You know how Mum is!"

"You were the one who didn't say anything about it to me!"

"I'm not your nanny!" Ron yelled. "I don't have to wait on you hand and foot--"

"I don't _want_ waiting on hand and foot, I'd settle for a kind word every now and then--"

"Why should I? You can't even open your mouth anymore!"

"Well, whenever _you_ do, it's to make fun of me and scold me and--and--" She burst into tears, grabbed her schoolbag, and raced out of the common room.

After a moment of shocked silence in the little family circle, Fred turned to Ron and said, "You know, for a moment there, I thought she was going to haul off and hit you, the way she used to."

Ron slid down the couch cushions until he was practically sitting on his neck. "Wish she would," he muttered. "She's such a _girl_ lately. Cries at the drop of a hat, goes sulking all around instead of just kicking me in the shins and getting it over with--"

Fred put his hand over his heart. "Our Wee One is growing up, Ronniekins. She's learning the fine and feminine arts of really making us suffer."

"Shuturrrrrrrrp."

George looked at the portrait hole. "You don't reckon something's really _wrong_, do you?"

"What, with her? Nah," Fred said, picking up his practice gloves. "She's just being moody. Come on, Wood'll have our heads if we're any later."


	8. Carmen

  


Carmen

  


What a day!

Ginny opened the door of a classroom on the third floor, hoping it was empty so she could pour everything out to Tom. But it wasn't.

Just inside the door were a tall, curly-haired Ravenclaw prefect and--

_"Percy?_"

They broke apart, Percy's face as red as his hair. "Ginny!" For once, he seemed at a loss, his mouth opening and closing like a fish's. "Wait--outside!" he burst out, finally, and Ginny backed quickly out of the classroom.

So this was where he kept disappearing to! Her bad mood momentarily dispelled, Ginny leaned against the wall, spurts of giggling breaking through the hands she'd clamped over her mouth. _Percy_ had a _girlfriend_? It was too fantastic. For once, the twins would have something real to twit Percy with, and maybe they'd leave her alone.

The Ravenclaw girl came out first, and Ginny had to turn away so as not to giggle in her face. Then, after she'd skived off down the corridor, Percy came out. His ears were still bright red, but he strode up the corridor in his usual officious prefect fashion. 

Ginny followed, grinning to herself. "You should have brought her to dinner sometime, Perce," she said slyly, catching up with him. "Mum would _love_ to meet your _giiiiiiiiiiiiirl_friend." She drew the last word out with sisterly relish, and was rewarded by the way the bright color spread from his ears across his cheekbones.

"Penny and I," he said briskly. "Well, we--we--" Officious prefectosity failed him at this moment. "Ginny," he said anxiously, "you won't--tell anyone, will you?"

"Oh, Perce, who'd believe me that _you_ were going out with anyone--especially a Mudblood?"

She clamped her hand over her mouth, not believing her own ears. She'd meant to say Ravenclaw--hadn't she? Really, hadn't she?

Percy whirled on her. "_Virginia Weasley!_" he roared. "_What did you say!"_

What she meant to say was, "Oh, Perce, I'm so sorry--I didn't mean to say it, I honestly didn't--"

But what came out of her mouth was, "Oh, don't get shirty with me, _Percival._ It's only a word."

He shook his finger in her face. "It's a nasty, horrible word, and I won't have you saying it of anyone!" His eyes were flashing dangerously. Percy's share of the Weasley temper usually had to be blasted out of him, but he had it, right enough, and at this moment Ginny was chanting the Explosivo charm. "Do you hear me, Ginny? I won't! Especially not Penny!"

She slapped his waggling finger away and shrieked, "Mudblood, _mudblood,_ MUDBLOOD!"

He slapped her across the face.

The sound seemed to echo around the empty corridor. Ginny slowly raised her hand to her burning cheek, feeling the blood throb against her fingers.

For a moment, Percy looked as white and shocked as she felt, but then he drew himself up and said in a voice that only shook a little bit, "I'm sorry about that, Ginny, but you know Dad never ever wants us using that word, and rightly so."

She said nothing.

"Now I won't tell him this time, Ginny, but if you do it anymore, or if I even _hear_ of it anymore--"

She swung her bag at his stomach as hard as she could, rewarded when he doubled over with an explosive _oof!_

"I hate you, Percy Weasley!" she screamed at him, and took off running down the corridor, leaving him gasping and winded behind her.

She darted into the girl's bathroom, knowing Percy would never follow her in here, and sank back against the door. Her legs gave out, and she slowly slid down the door to the floor, where she put her face in her hands.

It felt burning, scalding hot, and she felt hotter tears welling up. 

It wasn't _fair!_ Was the horrible thing that was making her open the Chamber of Secrets going to completely take her over? She hadn't believed what she was saying even as the ugly words were tumbling from her mouth, as if she weren't the one in control of her tongue.

She sniffled and pulled the diary out of her bag.

_Oh, Tom, what a horrible day._

**Tell me all about it.**

_It was bad already, and just now I was AWFUL to Percy, and after he's been so good to me the whole year!_

**I'm sure he provoked it. What happened?**

_I walked in on him and this girl kissing, and then before I knew what was happening, I called her a Mudblood and he yelled at me and I screamed back and then he SLAPPED me!_

**That's a little strong of him. Was that all you said? He's a bit sensitive, I must say.**

Ginny stared at the page. She'd told Tom how her family felt about that--that word, and here he was, acting as if it were nothing.

Something came back to her--something he'd written when they'd talked about that. **_It's only a word, Ginny._**

Like a bad dream, she heard her own voice, only a few moments earlier. _Don't get shirty with me, Percival. It's only a word._

Ginny stared at the words on the page until they were sucked away. She could hardly breathe. What if--what . . . if . . . _he_ was the one?

Memories of words wormed into her mind, words that she'd overlooked, words that were just a little off.

**__**

Is Dumbledore still the Transfigurations master? . . . **He's terribly strict, and he's suspicious of everyone.**

The Cruciatus is too good for them.

Better to keep it a secret. It mightn't happen again.

Maybe she forgot.

Dreams don't mean anything, Ginny.

Poisonous words, seeping into her, through her mind. They were coming faster and faster now, clustering up in a damning pile.

**__**

He probably wants to use you to get closer to Harry Potter, Ginny.

But you said yourself that he was really annoying. Maybe you're better off . . . You can do better than that . . . You have to be careful about who you make friends with. I'll tell you something I learned very young--this world's all about the people you know.

**It would have taken a great wizard to control it.**

Honestly, Ginny, I didn't remember until too late that you had to specify your original hair color too!

An avalanche of words like shards of glass in her eyes, making her see what he wanted her to see.

__

**But maybe Parseltongue isn't such a horrible talent. It's not a Dark thing itself, is it? . . . What's so bad about being able to talk to snakes? . . . Don't tell anyone about it. **

I'm sure it's just your mind playing tricks on you, Ginny. . . . Best not to tell anyone. You don't want people to think you're really crazy, do you? . . . Considering what he'd done, I'd say the Hufflepuff deserved it . . . 

**I think you're blowing this out of proportion. . . . You aren't going to do anything foolish, are you? Like telling anyone besides me?**

He was annoying, remember? He was taking pictures of Harry . . . Or was he just the only one that ever sat with you?

Making her into himself.

**_It's only a word._**

"Mudblood!"

****

It's only a word.

"MUDBLOOD!"

****

It's only a word.

Her father's voice echoed in her mind, something he'd used to say to her and her brothers when they would call each other names. _Sticks and stones might break your bones, but words are what really hurt._

Her fingers trembled on the cheap cardboard covers.

It was Tom who was doing this to her.

She flung the diary away from her, convulsively, and it skittered across the floor. The pages lay open, and writing slowly appeared. **Ginny? Are you there?**

She scrambled across the floor, scooped up the diary, and hurled it with all her might down Moaning Myrtle's toilet. Then she snatched up her bag and bolted from the third floor bathroom. 

Her bag thumped painfully against her bag as she fled, and her legs were burning, and her lungs hurt as she tried to draw in breath past her sobs. She scrambled down a flight of stairs, blinded by tears, and slammed into someone with such force her bookbag flew from her hand.

At that point, she was so desperate to get away from herself that she didn't even stop for it. She just fled.

Her legs gave out one wing and three passageways later, and she crumpled to the ground, catching herself just before she hit the floor. She was weeping so hard she couldn't do anything more than support herself on her hands and knees, blinded by scalding tears, her stomach dry-heaving from the force of her sobs.

It had been bad enough to realize that _she_ was the source of all the vicious attacks, that _she_ was the reason Harry was suspected and ostracized--but that _Tom_, her dearest friend, her confidante, the only one who understood her was the one making her do it . . .

She didn't want it to be Tom. But what other explanation was there? It had only been happening since the beginning of the year--since she'd gotten the diary. He'd seeped into every corner of her life, and it had been _his_ horrible words, _his _ugly voice she'd heard coming out of her mouth.

If he could do that, then surely he could invade her dreams and make her open the Chamber of Secrets.

Eventually, she'd sobbed it all out and there was nothing left to fuel her tears anymore. Ginny was able to drag herself to the closest wall, curling up against it like a kitten in vain search of softness. The coolness of the stone was a little comforting to her hot cheeks, and she let her eyes drift closed.

After several long, quiet moments of stillness, footsteps--slow, wary ones--worked themselves into her ears. Ginny almost moaned. She wanted to be _alone_--she didn't want some awful fifth year gawking at her . . .

Or a professor? She couldn't face a professor, not now, not knowing what she'd done and why . . .

Merlin's wand, what if it was one of her _brothers_?

"Ginny?" 

She turned her face more towards the wall, willing the intruder to go away.

"Ginny, you dropped your bag . . ." It was Carmen Jordan. 

She didn't care--whoever it was, she didn't _care_ . . .  
Rustling cloth, and then Carmen's voice said, "Ginny?" very gently.

"G'way," Ginny mumbled.

"Ginny, what's wrong? You were crying when you bumped into me, weren't you? What's wrong?"

Ginny screwed her eyes so tight they hurt. She couldn't tell Carmen. She couldn't tell anyone. What would happen if they _knew?_

There was another rustle. "Ginny, do you want some water?"

Her throat was wretchedly dry, so much that it hurt, and her head pounded from her bout of weeping. A drink of cold water sounded like heaven on earth. She lifted her head a little. "A-all right."

Carmen stood and held out her hand. "There's a bathroom right over there. Come with me, we'll get you some water."

It was a trick to get her on her feet, but Ginny was too wrung out to be mad about it. She got up, with Carmen's help, and followed her to the bathroom.

Ginny drank and washed her face, and then grimaced at herself in the mirror. She certainly didn't cry prettily--her face was splotchy red and white, except where the mark of Percy's hand still showed deep red. Her eyelids were swollen, and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. She tried to smooth down her hair, but it was impossible without a brush.

Carmen was leaning against the next sink, still holding her bag. "What happened?" she asked when Ginny finally straightened up.

She couldn't tell her the whole truth, but--"I had a fight with my brother. Percy," she added.

Carmen's face softened. "Was it bad?"

"Yeah," Ginny sighed. "Really bad." She dried her face on her robe. "Thank you," she said awkwardly, holding out her hand for her bag.

Carmen passed it over. "Listen," she said. "Want to walk to dinner?"

For the first time in a long while, Ginny actually felt hungry. But she ducked her head, suddenly shy. She'd been so rude to Carmen before . . . and pity galled like bile. "If you don't mind," she mumbled, bringing one finger to her mouth to nibble.

"If I minded, I wouldn't have asked," Carmen said.

That was true.

They were silent for a long time as they walked, and then Ginny said, "Why did you follow me?"

"You dropped your bag," Carmen said.

"I know--but you could have just left it there."

"What kind of a person do you think I am, Ginny Weasley?"

Perversely, her indignation reassured Ginny. She tried to explain. "I mean--I've just been so awful to you."

Carmen wrinkled up her face. "Yeeeeeesssss . . ." she allowed. It was another point in her favor that she didn't try to disavow what was only the truth. "But--I don't think that's _you._" 

They meandered along, not looking at each other. Ginny was still trying to chew her nonexistent fingernails.

Carmen said, "I'm sorry about the caterpillar crack."

"What?" Then Ginny remembered. "Oh." She switched fingers. "You didn't know I was there."

"I still shouldn't have said it. I was angry." Carmen was silent for a moment, and then said, "I really wanted to be friends with you at the beginning of the year."

Ginny's mouth fell open. "You _did?_"

"See, Lee was always talking about Fred and George--"

"Oh," Ginny said sourly. The twins' limelight again.

"But he'd tell stories that _they _would tell _him_, and some of them were about you. I know how it is, being a sister."

"They told _stories_ about me?" Probably the worst ones they could dig up--horrible tales of garter snakes and running about the yard in the altogether--

"Like the time you filled all their shoes with chocolate syrup."

Ginny started to smile. She was proud of that prank, undertaken in revenge for itching powder in her new party dress.

"And the time you threw up on Bill's nasty girlfriend."

Ginny felt her ears turning pink. She'd been twenty months old, and it had most definitely _not_ been premeditated. It was a story that got dredged up every so often, because Bill had seen the light after the nasty girlfriend had screamed the house down about her ruined blouse. If not for that, she might have had a really horrible sister-in-law right now.

Carmen said, "I liked you in those stories."

More silence now, the only sound their footsteps echoing in the vault-ceilinged hall.

Just they turned the corner to the Great Hall, Ginny said, "You're right."

"About what?"

"It hasn't been me, all this year." Tears welled, but she swallowed hard and pretended to scratch her nose so she could dash them away. "It's been--someone else."

"Ah." Carmen pretended not to notice that she was crying. "I thought so. Look, it's shepherd's pie tonight."

  


* * *

  


In the past weeks, Ginny had been nibbling at her food and pushing it away, but she was hungry tonight. She was _starving _tonight. She ate until Carmen laughed, half-alarmed. "You'll make yourself sick!"

"M'hungry," Ginny mumbled through a mouthful, reaching for another bun.

"Just don't make yourself puke, is all I'm saying."

After Ginny had eaten her fill--without puking--they went up to Gryffindor tower. Ginny instinctively started for the stairs, but Carmen held her back. "Let's play Exploding Snap. You want to?"

"All right."

"Look, there's Jere Markham. Let's see if he'll play."

_Oh, no, not him . . . _He hadn't said a word to her since their run-in after Charms class the week before. He was a friend of Carmen's, but would that persuade him to even come near _her_?

Ginny hung back, gnawing at a fingertip on which there was no nail left to chew. Jeremy's voice floated across the common room. "Aw, Carmen, come on, not her . . ."

"Just once, Jere! She's had a rough day, you can be nice--"  


It was worse than her brothers trying to get friends for her. Ginny was just starting to turn around to go back upstairs (to do what? No Tom to write to anymore) when Carmen marched over, said, "Come _on_, Ginny," and dragged her back across the room.

"But--"

"Never mind him. We'll play without him, see how he likes that!" 

But somebody already had the Exploding Snap cards. Ginny glanced around. "Look, there's the chess board--" For once, her brother and Hermione Granger weren't monopolizing it. "Have you got pieces, Carmen?"

"Oh--well, yes, I got them in a Christmas cracker. But Ginny, I don't play so well--"

"My brother _always_ beats me," Ginny sighed. "I'm sure we're about even."

But to her surprise, Ginny took Carmen's king in five economical moves, and Carmen gaped at her. "About even, my foot! _Which_ brother always beats you?"

"Ron," she said in surprise. Before he'd gone to Hogwarts, they'd been constant chess opponents, and she the near-constant loser.

Carmen hit her forehead. "My god, no wonder. Don't you know Ron's the best chess player in Gryffindor?"

"He is?" Ron was _good_ at something?

Jeremy stuck his big fat nose into it then. "Yeah, he beat a fifth year right around Halloween, and that great chess board of McGonagall's at the end of last year . . ."

"I heard about that," Ginny said. "He wouldn't stop bragging all summer. It was annoying. Don't s'pose it could have been that hard."

Jeremy gaped at her. "Come _on!_ McGonagall's chess board? You bet your life it was hard! Look at the kind of homework she gives us!"

Ginny gaped back. Ron _was_ the best chess player in her family . . . but when they would consent to play, Percy was always overcautious and both the twins were really reckless. As for the rest of the family, Bill and Charlie were hardly ever home to play with him, Mum had never learnt to play, and Dad preferred to watch. It was just Ginny, usually, and all she knew was that Ron almost always beat _her_.

"Oh," she said in a subdued voice.

"Oh," Jeremy mocked, rolling his eyes. "_Oh!"_

"Clear off, Jere," Carmen told him, flapping her hand as if she were shooing a bird. "We're trying to play."

"Oh, no, I'm not going to sit around for another bloodbath. I'm playing her this time--we'll see who's good now!"

Carmen gave Ginny a quick look, mouthing, _All right?_ at her. 

But Ginny's pride was stung. "All right, then, we will!"

Jeremy certainly wasn't as good as Ron, but he was good enough that it was a close game. She beat him in the end, but only just. There were at least as many wrecked pieces on her side as on his.

"Another game?" he asked hopefully, as his pieces pulled themselves together.

"Sure--and I'll stop playing so gently," she taunted.

He made a face. "Right. Sure. It'll be _me_ that's no more Mr. Nice Guy."

But forty-five minutes later, Jeremy was the one mumbling "Checkmate", and Ginny was the one grinning triumphantly.

"How'd you _do_ that?" he asked, staring at the chess board. "I never saw that pawn coming!"

"I made it up. Look, you kind of--" She showed him how she'd kept two or three pawns hanging about in reserve. He'd relaxed once he'd captured the bishop, never realizing it was only the decoy. "See? Ron calls it the Ginny Feint. He hates it."

Jeremy looked at her in surprise. "You know, you're not so bad, Ginny," he said. "For a girl."

"Oh, that's _nice_, that is--" Carmen murmured.

But, recognizing it for the compliment that it was, Ginny only said, "Thanks."

  


* * *

  


Several hours later, Percy broke up the game. "Go on, now, it's almost ten o'clock! You should be in bed!"

Jeremy made horrible faces behind his back, and Carmen had to cover her mouth to fight off the giggles. Ginny didn't feel much like laughing, however. Even as he herded them toward the stairs, Percy wasn't looking at her. 

Was he remembering this afternoon? Was he thinking of that awful thing she'd said, and the way he'd hit her? He'd never hit her before, and while it hadn't been hard, it had been terrifying and unexpected.

She started to follow Jeremy and Carmen to the dormitories when Percy said behind her, "Ginny--"

She was suddenly terrified of what he was going to say in that hollow, leaden voice. Was he going to write to Dad? _Had_ he written to Dad?

Before he could say anything else, she said very quickly, "G'nite, Percy," and sprinted up the stairs.

  


* * *

  


She went back to the third-floor bathroom the next day, shaking in her shoes. She didn't want Tom _back-_-but she wanted to destroy the diary more permanently than tossing it down a toilet.

Moaning Myrtle was sitting weeping on the back of the toilet, as usual. Ginny approached cautiously. "Hello, Myrtle . . ."

"What do you want?" Myrtle snuffled.

"I just--wanted to see how you were--doing." Ginny felt awkward, trying to nice to the unpleasant ghost. Nobody liked Moaning Myrtle--she clung to her various persecutions, imagined and real, like a child to a security blanket. 

"How do you think I'm doing?"

"Dunno--" Ginny tried looking around for the diary, but she couldn't see anything in the bathroom.

"I'd be better if you _living_ people didn't come around, showing off and throwing things at me!"

This was more like it. "What got thrown at you?"

"A silly little book," Myrtle said sulkily.

"What happened to it?"

Sensing that Ginny really wanted to know, Myrtle turned pettish. "Shan't tell you!"

"Please?"

"Shan't! Shan't! You can just find out for yourself, can't you!" The spotty ghost dove into her toilet and started making splashy raspberries from somewhere deep in the bowl. 

Ginny got out before Moaning Myrtle could flood the place again. She told herself the diary had been flushed and was somewhere out in the lake. Maybe the squid had eaten it.

That made her feel better, thinking of Tom bouncing around inside a giant squid.


	9. Valentine's Day

  


Valentine's Day

  


She managed to put it out of her mind, more easily than she'd thought possible, for a very simple reason. For the first time all year, Ginny was having _fun _at school. 

Jeremy was a constant bundle of energy, vibrating all over with ideas and mischief and too-quick words that sometimes stung, but never because he meant them to. Carmen had a mischievous streak of her own, but it was well-tempered by sturdy practicality and a perceptiveness that belonged to an older girl. Although she didn't realize it, Ginny rounded out their little trio with her healthy helping of daydreamy romanticism and the reemerging good humor that the previous months had all but buried.

In the girls' dormitory, she and Carmen talked far into the night, sharing confidances and moaning together about their respective figures. ("At least you've got a chance," Carmen grumbled when Ginny complained. "Look at your mum! Mine's as flat as a pancake, and so my dad's mum. Bloody genetics.") They whispered and passed notes in class, and made fun of Jeremy, who took it in stride and shoveled it back doubly. 

She taught Carmen how to cheat at Exploding Snap, and Jeremy how to beat anybody in the world but her brother Ron and herself at chess. She ate with them, and when she did the minimal amount of studying necessary, it was with them. Her marks rose, but they couldn't have gone anywhere but up anyway. 

Her obsession with Harry was looked on as fair game by Jeremy and sympathy area by Carmen. Ginny learned to deal with it, as long as they didn't say anything about it when he was actually around. Carmen, fortunately, was smart enough to do so, and saw to it that soon Jeremy was too.

To her own surprise, Ginny forgot to care about her brothers quite so much. They still teased and mocked her, but she'd somehow developed the thick skin that Percy had advised, and it mostly rolled off her back. What didn't, she could take to Carmen or Jeremy and soon be done with it. No longer did it fester just under her skin, making her sour and nasty.

She'd told herself she didn't care what her brothers said or did when she was only speaking to Tom, but that hadn't been true. Now it was. She actually had friends.

"Hey, Ginny?" Jeremy said one night a few weeks later.

"Hmm?" She was scowling at her Potions homework, which was an essay on the properties and uses of the common bezoar, at least four feet. Careful experimentation, and Jeremy's sabotage of Snape's ruler, had determined that they could get away with three feet, eleven and a half inches, but no less. Who said they didn't learn anything in Potions class?

Jeremy said, "Where's that diary you used to scribble in all the time?"

Ginny's hand jerked, and a huge blot appeared on her fourth inch. She hadn't thought about Tom--no, that wasn't right. She hadn't _let_ herself think of Tom ever since the day she'd walked out of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. "Oh, th-that?" she asked, trying to sound casual. "Oh, I--lost it?"

Carmen looked up from her own essay, which was hardly farther along than Ginny's. "Did you?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "I lost it." 

"When did you lose it?" Jeremy persisted.

She shrugged. "Who knows? Carmen, what have you got for this essay so far?"

She compared notes with Carmen for a moment, but just as she was starting to relax, Jeremy announced, "I like you better without it."

"Without--what? The diary?"

"Yeah. You come up for air every so often."

He didn't know the half of it.

  


* * *

  


Jeremy's mention of the diary made it sit in her mind like a poisonous toad all day the next day. She couldn't concentrate on her work at all, and when she barely cleared half her plate at lunch, Carmen asked if she was feeling all right. "Not like you not to eat, Ginny--"

Ginny's metabolism had become a joke amongst the three of them, but she couldn't smile at it. Seeing that, Carmen urged, "Go up to the infirmary, do--you've been off-color all morning."

Ginny blanched. She hated the infirmary, littered with the Petrified victims. Well--not _littered_ exactly--but even one was too much. She would turn green with purple spots before she went up there. "No, that's fine." She jammed a forkful of mashed potatoes into her mouth and grinned horribly. "Shee? I hunguh." She swallowed and wiped her chin_. Note to self: don't grin with mashed potatoes in your mouth. _"Don't worry about me, Carmen. I was up--reading last night."

"No you weren't, you were out before I came to bed--"

"Did I say last night? I meant this morning."

"You've never woken up early as long as I've known you."

"I went back to sleep again."

"Uh-huh." But Carmen left it at that.

In Potions, Ginny was walking back from the student's cupboard, essence of lionfish in hand, when she saw Jeremy whispering to Carmen. "What's _with_ her today?"

"Hush, Jere. It's nothing. Girls get moods."

"What for?"

"Once a month, and that's all I'm going to say."

"What? What do you mean, once a month? You get them a lot more than once a month--"

"Hsshhh!"

Ginny hadn't started _that_ yet, but she'd take it as an excuse, if it would allay Carmen's suspicions.

Within the day, her bad mood truly had passed, and she was back to her old self again.

  


* * *

  


"Why don't you do something about it?"

It was a wintry-pale afternoon, early in February, when Jeremy got tired of Ginny's complaint that Harry didn't look at her, never had, never would, there was just no hope, and so on and so forth.

"Really!" Jeremy continued. "I mean, just so you'll stop whining."

"I do _not_ whine," Ginny said with tremendous dignity. "And anyhow I wasn't talking to you."

"Might as well have been, you were that loud . . ."

Ginny gave Carmen a panicky look. Jeremy had been ten feet away, and Harry was just across the common room, hogging the chess board along with Ron. Carmen shook her head no; she hadn't been that loud. Jeremy just had sharp ears and enough knowledge of Ginny to make a good guess.

Jeremy flopped onto a couch and put his feet up on the table. "All I'm saying is, it gets old."

"Well what do you propose I do," Ginny retorted, "send him a valentine tomorrow?"

"If it'll help any--" Jeremy glanced over. "Oh, look, they've cleared off. Come on."

Jeremy almost beat her, but Ginny's mind wasn't on the game.

Maybe . . . a valentine would work . . . maybe a valentine would make him--

Oh, but she _couldn't_--it would be too embarassing--

But if she didn't sign it--then he wouldn't know--

But then he might look around to see who might have sent it, and then surely--he would see her--finally--

And even if he didn't, she would have shown him in some small way that there was someone out there who thought he was absolutely fantastic, who _knew_ he was good and kind and sweet, and that no matter what anyone said, she always would.

She lay in bed that night, her mind aflame with possibility. 

_He's really divine--_

Wish he was mine--

No, no, other way around.

It had to be perfect.

  


* * *

  


Carmen offered to put pink ribbons in Ginny's hair the next morning, but Ginny was not so lost to common sense as all that. She helped Carmen braid the dark pink ribbons into her own hair, however, and they showed up gorgeously against the smooth, glossy black.

After she had admired herself for a moment in front of the mirror, Carmen spun around. "Let me mess about with _your_ hair, please? Oh, please?"

"We're going to be late to breakfast, Carmen! Besides--" Ginny was brushing her hair as quickly as she could, and her words were a little muffled behind it all. "What do you want to mess with my hair for?"

Carmen laughed at her. "Your hair is darling, Ginny--that pretty color, and it's really lovely and manageable. You can actually get a brush through it, not like mine--"

"Your hair at least stays in place," Ginny said, shaking the whole mess back and tying the front half back with an elastic band. It didn't matter how smooth she got it this morning--it was so fine that by lunchtime half of it would be sticking out around her head like a corona. "Come on, let's go!"

"What's the rush?"

"I'm hungry, that's all--"

"Right--"

When they met Jeremy in the common room, he said, "About time. What were you doing up there?"

Carmen and Ginny rolled their eyes at each other and preceded him out the portrait hole. As they made their way down the staircase, Ginny slipped her hand inside her robes and touched the folded bit of paper in her pocket. It seemed warm to the touch. She grinned to herself, almost dancing. Jeremy was actually right about this--it was high time she did something about Harry rather than just mooning and sighing all the time . . . 

But what was she going to do about getting it to him? She couldn't walk right up and hand it to him--

"Oh. My. God." Jeremy had stopped in the door to the Great Hall.

Carmen pushed him in the small of the back. "Jeremy! Stop--oh."

Ginny's mouth fell open.

Flowers lined the walls, the size of dinner plates and the color of geraniums gone terribly, terribly wrong. Something fluttered constantly down from the ceiling, littering tables, floors, food . . . _heart shaped confetti?_

"Who--what?"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Lockhart the Lunkhead."

"Bet you're right."

They sat down and Ginny poured herself some pumpkin juice. She had to strain confetti out of it first. Just as she'd cleared her eggs of their paper covering, Jeremy poked her.

"What?"

"Look, it's the lunkhead himself."

Ginny grimaced at Lockhart's robes, which were the same frightening shade of pink as the flowers on the walls. Carmen began to giggle. "Honestly, someone should teach him about style--"

"Happy Valentine's Day!" Lockhart trumpeted. "And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards!"

"_Forty-six_?" Carmen and Ginny said in unison.

"Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all--"

Jeremy laughed so hard he snorted pumpkin juice out his nose.

"And it doesn't end here!"

"Oh no," Carmen said.

"My friendly card-carrying Cupids! They'll be roving around the school today delivering your Valentines!" Lockhart nattered on, but Ginny didn't hear. She was staring at the dwarves. 

They were the answer to her prayers.

  


* * *

  


After breakfast, Ginny pretended to forget her quills back at the table and ran back into the Great Hall. There was a dwarf stationed at the front of the Hall, sorting piles of valentines with a mulish look on his face. That should have been her first warning.

"Can you deliver this one, please?"

"'Arry Potter, eh?" he asked, looking at it with interest. "'E's in 'ere."

"Oh, not _now!" _She'd made the agonizing decision not to be on hand when the valentine was delivered. "Later, all right?"

"Later," he agreed, putting it on a pile.

She nibbled her nails. "It's very special--"

"Don't worry--we'll make it _really_ special for you, miss. Seeing who it is and all."

  


* * * 

  


Looking at Harry during lunch, she couldn't tell whether it had been delivered or not. Doubts were attacking her. What if he did figure out it was her? What if he made fun of her? (He wouldn't do that, he couldn't.) What if Ron got ahold of it? Or (horrors!) the twins?

Valentines were delivered all through the meal, and the dwarves were looking mulish and harassed as their approach sparked giggles and red faces. 

As one Cupid tromped past, muttering under his breath, Carmen leaned over to Ginny. "They don't look too happy, eh? I pity the poor fool who gets one of their valentines."

Ginny could feel her ears turning red. Carmen's mouth fell open.

"Oh, Ginny, you didn't--" Jeremy said, and couldn't go on for laughing.

"Look," Ginny fired back, "you were the one who said I should _do_ something about it, remember?"

"It was a joke, you nutter," Jeremy told her, grabbing at a passing platter. "A _valentine?"_

Ginny said defiantly, "It's just a little one--a very short poem--and I didn't _sign_ it or anything, I'm not thick--"

"Yeah, but you are obvious," Jeremy said around a mouthful of bun.

Carmen kicked him. "Shut it, you."

"Well, she is," Jeremy retorted, rubbing his shin. "Looking after him with those great sheep eyes all the time--oohhhhh Harry--heroic Harry Potter--"

Carmen gave him a hard look and put a comforting arm around Ginny's shoulders. "You're not that obvious--really you aren't--"

"Oh, no, not at all," Jeremy mocked. "The other houses might not have cottoned on yet."

Carmen leaned across the table and stuffed an apple in his open mouth, and Ginny applied herself to her own meal, her entire face now aflame. She was starting to regret that valentine poem.

  


* * *

  


She regretted it even worse later in the day. She, Carmen, and Jeremy were headed for their class when a voice cut through the din.

"Oy, you! 'Arry Potter!"

It was the worst messenger of Cupid Ginny could have possibly gotten--a tough and crabby-looking dwarf, with a face you could break rocks on. Ginny could only blush and pray that it wasn't, after all, _her_ valentine.

Harry glanced over his shoulder, turned bright red at the sight of the dwarf (whose looks were not improved by the addition of the halo and wings) and tried to make a break for it--but no luck. 

"I've got a musical message to deliver to 'Arry Potter in person," growled the most unromantic cherub ever, kicking his way through the crowd. 

_Musical?_ Then it couldn't be hers, hers was just a short poem--but they'd said they'd make it really special--

"Not--here--" she thought she heard Harry hiss.

"Stay still!" The dwarf was holding him back by his bag as he struggled to get away.

"Lemme go!" The bag ripped right in half, and everything in it cascaded to the floor. An ink bottle exploded like a small bomb. Harry dove for the floor and fumbled to pick it all up.

"What's going on here?" 

And she thought the whole episode couldn't get any worse--now that horrible Malfoy was going to sneer at Harry the way he did . . . Ginny moaned.

Percy shouted, "What's all this commotion?"

Yes, it _could_ get worse.

"Right," the twisted Cupid told Harry, sitting on his ankles so he wouldn't get away. "Here is your singing valentine. 

_

His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,   
His hair is as dark as a blackboard.   
I wish he was mine,   
he's really divine,   
The hero who conquered the Dark Lord."

  
_

He was trying to laugh, but Harry looked like he wanted to sink into the floor, and Ginny would have gladly joined him (and not only because they'd be alone together.) Where, oh where, had she gotten the brilliant idea to make _toad_ rhyme with _blackboard_?

And just to make it that much worse--_singing valentine!_ Oh, if she ever saw that head dwarf again she was going to throw his runty little body out the Astronomy tower! Special, indeed!

Percy, full of prefectness, was herding people off to class. "And _you_, Malfoy--"

Ginny glanced over involuntarily, and felt her entire body turn to stone. The valentine, the music, the dwarf, all were forgotten in the face of the horrible thing that confronted her.

_Malfoy was holding the diary._

But what--? Where had he gotten it from? How could he have--? _Oh god. Oh god. _It hadn't been flushed at all. It wasn't in the lake. Someone had found it.

"Give that back," someone said, and it took Ginny a full minute to realize that it was Harry's voice, quiet and steely.

Malfoy ignored him, sniggering to his two hench-apes. "Wonder what Potter's written in this?"

Harry. _Harry had found the diary._

Percy ordered, "Hand it over, Malfoy."

"When I've had a look," Malfoy sassed lazily, waving the diary to really rub it in.

Someone's hand closed around Ginny's. After a momnent, she realized it was Carmen's, and that she, Ginny, was breathing in quick, shallow, panicky pants.

"As a school prefect--" Percy began pompously, and if Ginny hadn't been in the grips of such belly-twisting terror, she would have really clocked him. Hadn't he figured out that didn't work?

_"Expelliarmus!"_ Harry roared, and the diary soared from Malfoy's grasp. That didn't make it better, though, because it meant he now had it back, and Ginny moaned under her breath.

As if to make the whole thing that much worse, Ron caught it.

Percy was yammering something about magic in the corridors, but Ginny pushed through the crowd, wanting only to get away. As she passed Malfoy, looking sulky and malevolent, he turned on her and sneered, "I don't think Potter liked your valentine very much!"

It was the last straw. Ginny put her face in her hands and fled into the classroom.


	10. Harry

  


Harry

  


Her class was History of Magic, which was a lucky thing, since Ginny had lost all ability to function and couldn't have paid attention or taken notes if she wanted to. 

Harry had the diary! He was carrying it around with him! Had Tom told him? But Tom mightn't tell him--oh, this was all so confusing, and the worst part was that she couldn't talk to anyone about it. She liked Carmen and Jeremy's company too much to risk it by revealing that she had--

"Ginny?"

She jumped about a foot. "W-what?"

Carmen eyed her sympathetically. "Class is over."

"Yeah, we need to get to Charms," Jeremy said. "After that, you can wallow about your valentine, but for right now, get a move on, all right?"

Carmen trod very heavily on his foot. "_Shut_ it."

Ginny put her hands to her flaming face. The valentine. She hadn't even thought about the botched valentine since she'd seen the diary in Malfoy's hand. For a few moments there, it had the most embarrassing experience of her life, of course, but it didn't matter now. Not next to the diary, and Tom, and _Harry_ so close to both of them.

But if Carmen and Jeremy thought her distraction was due to that, then they wouldn't ask questions, and she would be safe.

For the moment.

"A-all right," she said, gathering her things and trying to act like someone whose worst concern was the way she'd been spectacularly humiliated in front of a large portion of the school. "I'm coming."

  


* * *

  


If that had really been her only concern, it would have been a very bad evening for Ginny. 

Fred and George, who had not been there but who had heard about it in excruciating detail, had memorized the little song. Fred had taken the melody and George the harmony, and they sang it for hours, to the undying mirth of most of the common room. Carmen kept patting Ginny's arm and whispering, "It's okay, it's okay--"

If things had been different, Carmen would have been a godsend. As it was, she kept Ginny from flying to pieces, just by trying to distract her with games of Exploding Snap, bits of gossip, and attempts at chess. She even had a hissed, finger-waggling talk with Jeremy, after which he brought Ginny a Chocolate Frog and didn't say anything witty about the valentine, even though Ginny knew he dearly wanted to.

Harry seemed to have permanently turned beet-red, and every one of the six or seven hundred times she happened to be looking in his direction, he'd slunk a little lower in his chair.

_Can I possibly tell him?_ she asked herself, staring dully at the Chocolate Frog until it hopped into the fire and melted. Oh, no, no, no . . . She couldn't even speak to Harry without squeaking like a mouse that had been trodden on. But--Ron?

Ron had told her she would be expelled, back when Mrs. Norris had been Petrified. Of course, he hadn't known--how could he have known? He'd only said, "They'll catch the nutter who did this and have him out of here in no time. I only hope he's got time to Petrify Filch before he's expelled--"

Expelled. She would be expelled. How could they do anything else to her? And then her parents--Mum and Dad would be so disappointed and ashamed of her, and all her brothers would have to pretend that they didn't have a sister anymore, because she'd been letting the monster out of the Chamber of Secrets, and it would just be horrible for the whole family. And she'd have to live as an outcast from everybody--maybe even go to _Azkaban_ . . . 

What was she going to do? What on earth was she going to do?

As Fred and George came to the end of their final chorus of Ginny's valentine, warbling the last note like half of a barbershop quartet, Harry abruptly got up from his chair and made for the stairs. "'M tired. Going to bed," Harry said in answer to Ron's question. "G'night."

He fled up the stairs, to a roar of laughter. 

"Tired, indeed!" Fred chortled. "Prob'ly wants to compose his reply . . ."

At that, Ginny lost all patience. She grabbed up the chessboard and heaved it straight at her brothers' heads. They were caught so far off their guard that they didn't even duck the shrieking chess pieces.

"Ginny! What--!?"

She found herself standing on the seat of her chair, hands fisted on her hips. "Oh, honestly, you two, it's _not_ that funny! Just you--just shut up laughing! Just--" Her words devolved into a terrified squeak when she realized that her voice was the only sound in the entire common room. Everyone was staring at her with wide eyes and slack jaws. "Just leave it," she finished weakly.

Fred looked like a goldfish, his mouth opening and shutting without any sound coming out. George was staring at her as if she were a Purple People Eater.

"Now--" she said. "If you _don't_ mind--I--I--I'm going--to the--library." Head high, she stepped from the cushion to the foot rest and then to the floor and strode to the portrait hole through a roar of silence.

"Don't you want your bag?" Carmen ventured meekly.

"No, that's quite all right . . . I'll be--back later . . ." She climbed through the portrait hole and shut it firmly behind her, then sagged against the wall.

"Are you all right, dear?" the Fat Lady asked.

"No," Ginny moaned. "Nooooooooo . . ."

Inside the still-silent common room, George touched his forehead, where a red lump was already coming up from the impact of Ginny's queen piece. "Well," he said to George, "looks like Ginny's come back to herself."

Fred looked down at the chessboard, which was lying cockeyed on the floor, and felt his scalp. "Guess we should be careful what we wish for, eh?"

  


* * *

  


For the next few days, most of Gryffindor tower tiptoed around Ginny as they might around a sleeping panther. However, when she showed no more signs of erratic behavior, most of them put it away into a file labeled, "Weasleys--who knows?" and forgot about it. Ginny barely noticed. After her rather spectacular flash of temper, she sank back into her dark thoughts.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione had taken to having urgent, whispered conversations in the corner of the common room. They looked like they were arguing about something, but every time Ginny (or indeed anyone) tried to sneak close enough to hear what it was, Ron abruptly started talking about Cannons Quidditch in a loud voice, or Hermione began scolding them about homework, or Harry simply picked himself up and suggested going to the library.

At first, Ginny was terrified that the worst had happened, and Tom had betrayed her. But none of them treated her at all differently than normal. Hermione was still briskly detached, Ron still ignored her except when he wanted someone to make fun of, and Harry . . . was just . . . Harry.

He never once turned the full force of his sweet unexpected smile on her. His eyes did not light up when he caught sight of her. And of course he never suddenly said, "Why, Virginia, I never noticed how beautiful you were before! Let's leave your brothers behind and ride off into the sunset, shall we?"

But then again, neither did he turn away from her in disgust, or denounce her in front of the entire school--"Do you know what that stupid little girl has been doing?"

The lack of one just about made up for the lack of the other, she decided. Never before had she been so happy for him to ignore her. 

Perhaps she was worrying about nothing.

It was so much nicer and easier to believe that Harry had avoided writing in the diary. Perhaps he'd tossed it out. Perhaps he was using it to prop up a wobbly chair in his dormitory room. Perhaps it was gathering dust and sock lint under his bed.

(What, then, were they discussing so urgently?)

Ginny lay awake at night and worried. Tom had fooled her so easily . . .

But after all, Harry was not her. He wasn't a silly little first year, so lonely and self-absorbed and self-pitying that he would grasp at any friend that offered. He had friends already. He didn't need Tom.

But Tom was so . . .

She turned to her side, pulling her knees up to her chest and ducking her chin down so she was curled as tight as possible. She entertained a brief fantasy of being a sponge, so if she squeezed herself tighter and tighter, she might somehow squeeze all this trouble and worry away. Then she watch it go swirling down a drain and it would be gone forever . . . 

With a sigh, she uncurled and stretched her legs out again, shivering slightly when they encountered the cooler sheets further down the bed. She wasn't a sponge, and this wasn't about to go swirling down a drain. She had to figure out what to do. 

She tucked her hands under her pillow and tried to think about it logically.

If Harry had the diary, but wasn't writing in it (_but what if he is_? whimpered her worries. _Stop that, Ginny_, her logical brain said sharply), that meant that no-one else was, either. If no-one wrote in the diary, Tom couldn't get out, and all the attacks would stop. Everyone would assume that the monster had left, and when the Mandrakes were ready in the springtime, the Restorative Draught would wake all the Petrified victims up and the whole mess would be over, and no-one need ever know about her involvement in it.

Ginny basked in that lovely vision for several minutes before logic forced her to go on.

On the other hand, if Harry had the diary, and he _was_ writing in it, that meant that it was only a matter of time before Tom got to him the way he'd gotten to Ginny. The monster would get out again. And this time, when people accused him of being the Heir of Slytherin, they would be very nearly right . . .

Was it worth banking on her own observations? If she was wrong, she would only discover it when someone else got Petrified.

But what could she possibly do about it? All she could do was get the diary away from him--but what then? She couldn't throw it away again. That wasn't at all safe. She didn't know how Tom had done it, but somehow he'd rescued himself from the toilet and put himself into Harry's hands.

The thought of keeping it made the bile rise in her throat. Knowing now what Tom was and what he had done to her when she'd believed so completely that he was her only friend, the mere thought of the diary made her stomach twist. Could she bear to keep it? 

A haunting thought floated across her brain. Could she bear to keep it and not write in it?

Ginny rejected that straight away. She knew Tom now. She knew what he was. She knew what he could do. She wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

And surely, surely, Harry wasn't nearly so silly as she had been. Surely they would both be safest if she just left it where it was.

  


* * *

  


For several weeks, Ginny repeated that to herself every morning and every night. Harry was fine. He wasn't acting strange at all. Tom wasn't getting to him. She was safe. They were safe.

But as the days wore on, and Ginny's fingernails slowly started to retreat back down toward her fingertips, the words started sounding hollow.

Because honestly, Harry _wasn't_ fine. He was worried, and unhappy, and seemed to go around in a muddled haze so that when anyone spoke to him, he lifted his head and blinked like a swimmer coming out of deep water. One day just before Easter holidays, Ginny even saw him snap at Hagrid, who reared back, looking confused and hurt.

"Sorry, Hagrid," Harry said swiftly. "There's just--I've got something on my mind, is all."

"Ah," Hagrid said. "Choosin' yer subjects for next year, eh? I 'member the first time I did that--" He sighed. "_On'y_ time . . ."

"Yeah, that's it. Hagrid, think I should take Care of Magical Creatures? Fred and George like it, but I dunno--"

Ginny slipped away, her hand already drifting to her mouth. At noon, she barely ate one bite of her spotted dick, even though it was her favorite.

"Something wrong?" Jeremy asked her when she offered the remains to him.

"No," she said.

"You sure?"

"Yes." She gathered herself together. "I'm tired. I think I'll go back to the tower and take a nap before class."

"A nap!" Jeremy said.

Carmen caught up with her halfway down the Great Hall. "I just got the new 'Young Witch' magazine this morning. You want to read it together?"

"No, I really am tired."

"All right. If you want it, you can ask."

Ginny sighed inwardly. She appreciated Carmen's concern, honestly she did, but not right at this very moment. More than anything, she'd wanted solitude in the dormitory think things over. Maybe she could close her curtains, and Carmen would at least think she really was sleeping.

As they climbed into the common room, Harry was hunched over staring at the fire, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. Ron was standing over him, evidently trying to talk him out of his mood. 

Impulsively, Ginny slipped her hand into the pocket of her robes and retrieved a spare quill. Letting it drift through her fingers to land on the floor behind the couch, she continued on with Carmen halfway up the stairs. Then she put her hand in her pocket. "Oh!"

"What is it?"

"I must have dropped my quill in the common room," Ginny said, turning back.

"It'll still be there later," Carmen called out after her.

"S'my favorite! I'll be up in a mo."

"Come on," Ron was saying as Ginny crouched down for her quill. "How do you even know he was telling the truth?"

Harry's robes rustled against the chair as he shifted restlessly. "It _looked_ like something that really happened. How could he have made all that up?"

All what up? Who was _he?_

"Hermione's worried about you, you know. You're letting that Tom Riddle character get to you, mate."

Ginny's fingers clenched so convulsively that the quill broke with a sharp _crack._

At the sound, Ron looked over his shoulder and opened his mouth. Before he could betray her presence to Harry, Ginny took to her heels.

"Since when do you have a favorite quill?" Carmen asked when she got into the first-year's dormitory.

Ginny didn't answer, but only tossed the broken quill onto her night stand and threw herself face-down on her bed.

"Ginny? What's wrong?" 

She hadn't the foggiest idea of how she was going to save Harry, but she knew she had to. She was the only one who knew what that diary could do to people . . . 

"Ginny?"

It had been bad enough thinking that Tom would merely tell Harry about her role in the opening of the Chamber of Secrets, but that Tom would actually dare to--

Would he? Would he honestly?

Oh yes.

She had to stop it happening. She knew what it was like, losing bits and pieces of your life, and watching the results throw an entire school into turmoil.

Maybe, because she knew Tom, and she knew what he did, she could withstand it, and could keep him from getting into her head. Harry didn't know, and might not realize what he was doing while he was doing it, as she hadn't. Maybe, now that she knew, she could hold Tom off. And Harry would be out of danger.

"Ginny!"

She sat up to find Carmen staring at her. "What?"

"I'm asking you what upset you."

"It's all right, Carmen." Ginny's mouth firmed. "I'm going to take care of it."

She had to get that diary back.

  


* * *

  


In spite of her brave words to Carmen, Ginny was petrified. In fact, she might have been better off if she really were Petrified. At least then she wouldn't have to move through her normal life while all these mad things were happening around her. In some ways, she envied the people in the hospital wing that she'd gotten to. 

The biggest problem, especially during the Easter holidays, was that there always seemed to be somebody in Harry's dormitory, and whenever there wasn't, she was with Carmen and Jeremy. They were watching her very hard now, trying to figure out what the problem was. No matter how much she wanted to shake them for that, they were still her friends.

Then, one Friday evening, her opportunity cropped up.

Jeremy was trying to teach Carmen to play chess, and she was shaking her head. Her chessmen from Christmas were so new still that they couldn't help her out, only squealing with fear whenever Jeremy's approached. Ginny was watching, smiling in spite of herself. 

"Ginny," he called out to her, exasperated. "Run upstairs, would you, and get your chessmen. I want a real game."

"Oh, I--" She paused and looked around the room.

Harry wasn't there, because there was a game tomorrow and Wood had called one last practice. Ron was by the fire, trying to talk Hermione into putting her book down and playing cards with him. Neville Longbottom had left for yet another Snape detention. All the other boys who slept in that dormitory--and she knew them by sight now--were scattered throughout the common room, absorbed in their various pursuits.

And she had the perfect excuse.

"I'll be just a minute," she said brightly, then leapt out of her chair and bolted up the stairs.

Her floor was one down from the second-years. She thundered past it, gasping for breath. They _did_ have to be at the very top!

She paused in front of the boys' dormitory, panting. There were voices chattering behind the girls' door. She knocked softly at the boys', praying she hadn't missed somebody.

Nobody answered.

_Perfect._

She nudged the door open, slipped inside, and kicked it shut. Then she looked around.

She'd never been in a boys' dorm before, but not for nothing did she have six brothers. She paid no mind to the piles of dirty socks, the Quidditch magazines tossed on top of unmade beds, the lurid posters on the wall--that'd be Ron's bed, that one--

_But which one was Harry's?_

For a horrible moment, she thought she was going to have to go through all of them. Then she saw a green jumper tossed over the end of one bed, its arm trailing on the floor. A Weasley jumper! _Harry's _Weasley jumper!

She dove for it, shaking it hopefully. Nothing. She seized the covers on his bed--_this is Harry's bed! he sleeps on it!--_and wrenched them off. No cheap little diary clattered to the floor. She grabbed the pillow. Bare sheets.

His cloak hung over a chair, and she snatched it so quickly that it ripped. She couldn't spare the time to feel bad--there was nothing in it but Dumbledore's Chocolate Frog card.

She spun and wrenched the drawer out of his bedside table. Spare quills, ink bottles, parchment, sweets, chessmen, and Exploding Snap cards cascaded down over the mattress she'd laid bare. A thick, heavy photo album bounced off the mattress and hit her foot.

_"Owwwww! Oooo--owww!"_

She slapped her hand over her mouth and went still. There were no footsteps, no "Who's in there?" After a moment she relaxed. 

_Think, stupid, think think thinkthinkthink!_

His schoolbag! Of course!

She dumped it out all over the floor. Books thudded, ink splattered, and pages flew. But no diary.

She dove for his wardrobe and went through all the pockets of his robes, turning them inside out. She found two broken quills and a half-eaten Chocolate Frog, but no diary.

_What if he has it right now? What if he's carrying it with him all the time like I did?_

Only one place left!

She wrenched up the lid of his trunk and was instantly confronted with a jumble of disorganized knickknacks. She heaved aside _Quidditch Through the Ages_, a pair of ugly mustard-colored socks, two Lockhart books, assorted sweets, and--

_There!_

She snatched up the diary and started to open it, then slammed it shut. She didn't want to even look at the pages. 

Instead, she stared at the mess she'd left behind her. Harry's things were scattered all over the bed and the floor. Chocolate Frog was ground into the floorboards. The photo album was right in the path of a pool of spreading ink.

She darted in to pick that up, brushing it off tenderly before placing it on his bed in a bare patch. It looked as if someone had taken great care with it--the only scuff marks on the leather were ones she'd put there. Whatever photos Harry had, she didn't want to see them destroyed because of her.

For a moment, she thought about trying to neaten the rest of it up, but she'd already been gone for so long that she was going to have to make up a story to explain her absence to Jeremy and Carmen. 

_Oh, Harry, I'm sorry, really I am, but--you don't know what kind of danger you're in--I had to--_

With a guilty swallow, she turned away from her mess and slipped out the door.


	11. Tom's Return

  


Tom's Return

  


That night, for the first time since she'd hurled the diary down Moaning Myrtle's toilet, Jeremy steamrollered her at chess.

Her mind had not been on the game. All her concentration had been on the diary. She'd stuffed it deep in her trunk when she'd gone in for her chessmen, in the hopes that "out of sight, out of mind" was a truism.

Within minutes, she found out it wasn't.

It seemed to her that if she ventured back into her dormitory, it would shine out like a malevolent swamp-green beacon, bathing her in its unhealthy light. Everyone would know. Everyone would turn on her, and she would lose everything she'd gained since she'd thrown him away . . .

"Right," Jeremy said, "now I know something's wrong. Snap out of it, Ginny, do. I want a decent game."

. "Ginny, are you sure you're feeling all right?" Carmen asked.

Ginny put her hand to her head. Every sound echoed strangely in her skull. "I dunno." 

Jeremy was examining the two pieces of a pawn that had really suffered in the game. "Reckon you should go to bed?"

"You should go to the infirmary." Carmen got up. "Come on, I'll go with you."

"I don't need the infirmary," Ginny said automatically. She hated even the thought. She got up from her chair, wobbling slightly. "I'm going to bed." Her bed, her warm bed with its thick duvet and velvet curtains . . . "I'll be better after a night's sleep."

"All right, but if you're not, I want you to go to Madam Pomfrey in the morning, okay?"

"I'll be _all right_," Ginny said.

She wasn't so sure of that in her own mind. She had to hang on to the railing on the way up. She felt disoriented, as if this staircase that she'd climbed hundreds of times since September was completely unfamiliar, and she had to carefully think of where each step was before putting her foot on it.

And her head was spinning, spinning, spinning . . . 

The dormitory was still and silent, completely free from swamp-green beacons. She marveled at it. How could it be so peaceful, when _he_ was in it?

Her bed was as warm and cosy as she'd looked forward to. She curled down under the covers, snuggling deep into the promise of safety and rest it offered.

Rest, however, didn't come.

Before long, her covers were a tangled, twisted mess as she tossed and turned, desperately seeking a cool place that would let her mind and body calm themselves long enough for her to fall asleep. 

It wasn't that her thoughts were confusing. They were not at all confusing. They focused like the sun through a magnifying glass on one single thing.

_Tom._

Tom, Tom, Tom, TomTomTomTOM.

His name throbbed in her head like the pounding of a rotten tooth.

She'd thrown him away so quickly after realizing what he'd done to her that she'd never been able to ask him about the one thing she didn't understand.

_It won't be so bad if I just write in it once_, she argued with herself. _Now that I know . . . and I just don't understand WHY . . . and maybe if I know that, I can fight him even better . . ._

Quickly, before she could think herself into a corner, Ginny kicked off her duvet and scrambled for her trunk. She had to dig for it, but the precise location was branded in her mind.

In half a moment, the diary sat in her hands once again. Feeling the cheap cardboard against her fingtertips, it was if she'd never thrown it away. Her constant--and only--companion for five months. 

Automatically, her left hand opened it while her right hand reached for a quill.

_Are you there, Tom?_

**Ginny! What happened? How did you lose me? It's so good to hear from you again--**

_Stop lying_, she scrawled, her hand shaking with rage.

****

Lying? I don't know what you mean--

__

Just shut up. I know what you did. I know what you made me do. I know all about you, Tom Riddle, and I'm never, ever trusting you again.

****

There was a pause of several seconds, while her ink sank into the page and disappeared. Then slow, thoughtful handwriting appeared. **You do, do you. And yet, you came back to me. You're writing in me again.**

__

Not because I want you back. I don't need you anymore. I have friends of my own, real friends who would never use me for their own sick purposes.

**Very good, well done you.** If words on a page could be said to sneer, these did. 

__

I'm not writing because I even want to talk to you again. Believe me, when I find out what I want to know, I'm going to BURN you.

****

And what do you want to know, little Ginny?

_Why?_ she scribbled furiously. _WHY, Tom? Just tell me that!_

**Because I could**, was his cold reply. **And because you wanted them to suffer.**

Her mouth fell open, and tears sprang to her eyes. Her worst nightmare . . . _I didn't! I didn't want to hurt Colin!_

**Oh, I'll admit that he was mostly for expedience's sake. Couldn't have you with a friend other than me, after all. But the other two . . . that cat scratched you, and you hated it, remember? And you hated the Hufflepuff because he'd shouted at Harry. You were even a little annoyed at Colin, for all his photos. You did want them to suffer, Ginny. I just gave you the means to.**

_You're lying!_

**We've all got a dark side, Ginny. Yours is just a little stronger than most. **

Ginny put her hands to her face and whimpered into them. No, no, noooooooo . . . this wasn't her, it hadn't been _her_, it was Tom . . .

****

More writing appeared on the page. **I really must thank you for the fantastic fun it's been. Anything to mess with those cursed Mudblood's minds--**

Furious, wanting only to cut back at him the way he'd cut at her, she grabbed up her quill again. _But YOU'RE a Mudblood!_

The reply was instantaneous. **You dare! YOU DARE! I am the Heir of Slytherin, heir to the greatest wizarding blood in all your pitiful little world! My bloodline goes back beyond written history, back before the Egyptians, absolutely pure--**

_Only the one side,_ she sniped, so delighted to be angering him that she didn't think about the wisdom of it. _On the other side is a common Muggle! His father was a common Muggle, his mother was a common Muggle--common Muggles all the way back to those stupid Egyptians of yours! You're just as "inferior" as all those helpless people you've Petrified, and you know it, don't you?_

**You'll pay for that, Virginia Myrtle Weasley. You will pay.**

Suddenly frightened, she snapped the book shut and flung it under her bed. Then she scrambled under her covers and huddled up against her pillow, gnawing her pinky nail in trepedition.

What would he do to her?

Then she thought, _It's only a book. It's only a diary._

But he'd made her attack all those people before.

_But I didn't know what I was doing then! Surely now I do, I can hold him off. Surely I'm stronger than he is. He's just a ghost, after all. Even less than a ghost. He's words on a page. He's nothing._

Surely I'm stronger than he is.

Surely.

  


* * *

  


Carmen paused by Ginny's bed. The curtains hung open slightly, just enough so she could see her friend's face. She looked as if she were having bad dreams. But at least she was asleep . . . Carmen had heard her tossing and turning for hours after she'd gone to bed herself.

Should she wake Ginny?

Her friend had looked terrible last night, as if she were going to be sick to her stomach any second. She needed the rest, Carmen decided, more than she needed breakfast. 

But there was the game this afternoon. Ginny would just go mad if she missed seeing Harry on the pitch.

_I'll let her sleep_, Carmen told herself. _Surely she'll be awake by the time the game starts._

Twitching the curtains closed, Carmen slipped out of the dormitory and went down into the common room to wait for Jeremy.

  


* * *

  
****

Get up, Ginny.

She was dreaming. It was a dream-voice, a nightmare Tom . . . 

**Get up.**

She saw her hands push back her covers, and she thought wildly, _Stop that! Stop it!_

Her legs swung around and her feet landed on the floor and her toes crawled into their warm slippers all on their own. She wanted to shout out, so loud that she would wake herself from this horrible nightmare, but her mouth wouldn't move. 

_Tom?_

****

I let you sleep through the other times, Ginny. I'm not going to be so nice this time. You're going to see everything, and you're going to know exactly what you're doing.

She wanted to pull away, but her body was so thoroughly not her own that she couldn't even struggle. She had to fall back on the poor substitute of pleading. _Tom, no, please! I'm sorry, I'm really really sorry! Please let me go back!_

****

Too late for that. Shoe's on the other foot now, isn't it?

Downstairs, through the still silent common room--_please_--out through the portrait hole, down to the third floor--_where are we going? Oh, please, Tom, let me go!_

****

You ought to recognize it.

Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

__

What are we doing here? I want to go back, let me go back!

****

You know. You've been here before. You know what to say.

It was someone else who opened her mouth and hissed, _"I command you to open."_

No . . . no . . . her voice after all, it seemed, but--_Tom, stop it, please stop it, please let me go--_

Then what little was left of Ginny inside the eleven-year-old girl's body recoiled in terror as an enormous hole appeared in the floor.

Her mouth said, _"Come to me, thou monster of the deep, thou creature of night . . . come to your master . . ."_

If her body had been her own, her breath would have been bottled up in her chest, and her knees would have been shaking. She might even have been weeping with sheer animal terror. 

But her lungs worked regularly, and her knees supported her, and her very tear-ducts were under Tom's control. For a moment, as Tom turned her head, Ginny saw herself in the mirror. She didn't recognize herself. Her eyes were flat and cold, and her lips, red as blood in the midst of her bloodless face, curved in a triumphal smirk. Only her hair was the same brilliant shade as usual. 

Somehow, that made it all that much worse. Real Ginny and this Ginny had that same fiery horrid hair, which meant they were the same . . .

_I'm sorry please please let me go please stop_

And then the hole was no longer gaping. It was filled instead with the head of some great, scaled creature that dipped its head before her, so she couldn't see its eyes, only the top of its head and down its long, long neck . . . 

Such a very long neck.

There didn't seem to be a . . .

At the chilling realization that washed over her, Ginny fell abruptly silent. She had been begging with Tom, pleading, all this time, to let her go, to let her return to her bed, to make this all a dream. It had become a mindless wailing litany, almost unconscious on her part. 

But the appearance of the huge snake cut her short, forcing one diamond-hard truth into her understanding. Tom wasn't going to let her go. He was going to use her body precisely as he wished, and he would only return it to her control when he was done.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

  


* * *

  


The sun was shining in her eyes, and Ginny turned her face away.

_I can move my head. All on my own._

She experimented with fingers, toes, testing them out. They were hers once again. Tom was gone . . . but for how long?

She dodged away from that question and pushed herself up from her bed. Her knees shook in remembered terror.

She was still in her nightgown, but it was dirty and damp from the disgusting slimy walls of the pipes. With a head-to-toe shudder, she ripped it off and thrust it under her bed, where she'd never have to look at it again. Bundling her wrapper around her trembling limbs, she headed mindlessly for the showers.

Ginny turned the water as hot as it would go, until she almost couldn't breathe for the steam. She scrubbed herself raw and tender, trying to rid her skin of the sensory memories of the pipes and of the cold, silken snake-skin against her--

_No!_

When the water turned suddenly cold in response to the twenty-minute charm on the shower-head, she had to get out. She didn't bother with towels or combing her hair. She simply bundled herself up again, yanking the belt of her wrapper as tight as she could. Dripping, she crept back up the stairs.

The sun still lay in a bright patch across her bed. Ginny climbed into it and sat, feeling her hair drip onto the back of her wrapper and create an unpleasant damp patch. She closed her eyes and turned her face into the sunlight, seeking warmth like a newborn baby.

Closing her eyes had been a mistake. Disjointed images flashed across the back of her eyelids, as clear and bright as a stained-glass window that had been shattered and lay in pieces on the floor.

Ginny opened her eyes hastily and concentrated on the pattern of the rug. Her fists clenched with the effort of tracing the lines and colors, and not letting anything else into her mind.

"Ginny!"

She gasped as her concentration broke. 

Carmen raced across the room and threw her arms around her. "Ginny! Ginny! I couldn't find you anywhere, and I was scared that--"

Ginny felt forced to give an account of herself. "I--I just got up a little while ago."

"Have you heard? About Hermione and the Ravenclaw girl? Oh, but you must have--you look awful."

She'd heard. She'd heard their voices around the corner, Hermione suggesting a mirror, the sickening thud as their Petrified bodies had given way to gravity . . . 

And Tom's voice, self-satisfied. **Perfect.**

"I heard," she said.

  


* * *

  


In Carmen's company, she was forced to rouse herself and put on proper clothes. The other girls came into the dormitory room, clinging to each other and speaking in scared but excited tones, as if a bomb had gone off in their midst and might very well do so again. The common room was the same, when Carmen dragged her down into it. Everyone was wandering around whispering to each other. Perversely, Ginny felt safer here among all the other victims than she had alone. Her own numbness wasn't as noticeable, and watching everyone else was a perfectly suitable distraction, much more effective than the rug had been.

They all fell silent when the portrait hole creaked open and Ron and Harry clambered in, followed by Professor McGonagall. Even in the midst of her haze, Ginny blinked. She'd never seen the stern Transfiguration professor penetrate this far into student territory. 

The reason was clear when she began reading off the list of new restrictions.

Confined to houses after six . . . escorted to lessons and meals, even the bathroom . . . no more evening activities . . . the rules were simple and binding. Nobody was to be given the chance to wander about on their own.

If Ginny set the creature loose a thousand times more, she couldn't harm anyone else.

She barely had a moment to extract a sort of dank reassurance from this thought before Professor McGonagall said, in an obviously unscripted moment, "I need hardly add that I have rarely been so distressed. It is likely that the school will be closed unless the culprit behind these attacks is caught."

Ginny froze, and the next words rang in her ears like the bells on Judgement Day. 

"I would urge anyone who thinks they might know anything about them to come forward."

Hardly had the professor left before people started talking again, in loud indignant voices--something about chucking the Slytherins out. Ginny didn't hear.

_The school will be closed . . ._

The culprit.

That's me.

Anyone who thinks they might know anything about them . . .

That's me too.

"Ginny?" Carmen said loudly.

Ginny looked around sharply, and her mouth launched into gear without prompting from her brain. "Isn't it horrible?" she gabbled. "Poor Harry. No Quidditch." At that point, her brain clicked on. "And Hermione Granger Petrified, too, of course," she added quickly.

"Of course," Carmen said.

The afternoon passed much slower than it should have, as if time had suddenly become a form of taffy and could be stretched out in long strings.

"Your brother's practically catatonic," Jeremy commented at some point during the interminable hours.

"Ron?" Ginny looked around. Harry and Ron were huddled in a corner, talking in low intense voices. Ron was looking pale and a little sick.

"No, no, Percy. The Ravenclaw girl was a prefect, you know. He must have known her."

_The Ravenclaw girl . . . _

Percy, white as snow, hadn't moved from his chair once since Ginny had come downstairs, even to scold her about not coming to breakfast. Dread formed itself into a tight ball just under her breastbone. "Who--what's her name?"

"Um--" Jeremy's brow crinkled.

Carmen chewed her lip. "Patty? No. Penny."

Penny! _That_ Penny!

"Yeah, that was her name," Jeremy said.

"Don't talk about her like that," Ginny snapped.

"Like what?"

"In the past tense!"

"All right. Calm down. Sorry."

"She's getting revived," Ginny said fiercely. "They all are. Soon. Don't talk about them like they're dead!"

Her voice, on the shrill verge of hysterics, was the loudest sound that the common room had heard since the cancellation of the game. People turned to stare. Ginny clamped her mouth shut.

Hers wasn't the only outburst of the interminable afternoon, though. There were little spats of them, as people broke for a second and their tense whispers become louder-than-meant shouts.

Unable to bear the atmosphere in the common room another moment, Ginny made her way up the stairs. The dormitory was empty, everything exactly the same as she'd left it.

Ginny stood in the doorway and looked at the peaceful, comfortable little room. She thought of the warm, cosy common room, now wall-to-wall with sour fear.

They should have been safe here. She should have been safe here.

Ginny threw herself flat on her stomach and wiggled like an eel under her bed. Her questing fingers found the little book, and they closed around it vindictively. She hauled it out and gripped it in both hands. She stared at it until her eyes burned and her teeth hurt from clenching them together.

_I'm going to burn you. I am. I am._

She opened the door of the little potbellied stove that sat in the middle of the room, warming the air. The coals glowed at her, beckoning.

She pushed the diary at them, but stopped just before it would have caught fire. Her arm muscles quivered, as if a battle were raging down among the very cells.

_Do it!_ her mind shouted at her. _Burn it!_ But her hands wouldn't move.

The corner closest to the coals started to darken, and a faint smell of smoke reached her nose. With a gasp, Ginny jerked it back to safety and slammed the stove-door shut.

_Stupid! Stupid stupid!_

But she just couldn't. Whether for the months and months of companionship that it had given her, or some other reason that she was afraid to think of, Ginny couldn't burn the diary as she'd intended.

She spun around and found herself facing her open wardrobe. Rolling the diary into a tube, she thrust it into one of her dirty socks, then put another one on the other way. Ripping the pillowcase off her pillow, she wrapped that around it and tied the whole bundle up with an extra-long hair ribbon, knotting it over and over again with vindictive thoroughness. Finally, panting slightly, she climbed atop her nightstand and deposited the odd bundle among the dust bunnies on top of her wardrobe.

_Get out of that, Tom!_

She leapt onto her bed from her night stand, then collapsed to sprawl on her back, panting, tears stinging her eyes. She blinked them back furiously. Tears wouldn't help. Even imprisoning Tom in layers and layers of cloth hadn't helped.

She lay on her bed, staring at her canopy, for several minutes. When she heard voices outside, she rolled onto her stomach and grabbed a notebook at random, burying her nose in it as the other girls came in.

The evening was almost worse than the afternoon had been. With the darkness came fear, permeating the tiny room. It suffocated her like a pillow over her face, until she wanted to gasp for air.

She wanted to get out, but there was nowhere to go. Everywhere in Gryffindor Tower would be the same, and thanks to that morning, she couldn't leave the tower.

Still, she pushed her way through the thick atmosphere and went to sit on the stairs, huddling next to the coolness of the central pillar. People kept climbing past her, grey-faced and murmuring to each other, so she couldn't even escape there.

Ginny climbed down the stairs to the common room, hoping everyone had gone up to bed. But Percy was still in his chair in front of the fire, staring blankly into the flames. 

She stopped in the doorway, biting her lip. They hadn't properly spoken to each other since the day she'd called Penny a Mudblood. She'd been too afraid to make a move and fall into the deep chasm she'd carved with that ugly word.

And now Penny had suffered even more at her hands . . . 

She crossed the room and sat delicately on the sofa, her legs dangling. He didn't seem to notice she was there.

"Percy?" she asked softly.

His eyes flickered over in her direction, but he didn't move otherwise.

"Percy," she said again. "I'm--I'm sorry, Percy."

His hand lifted jerkily, like a marionette's, and he patted her awkwardly on the knee. Thanks of a sort.

He cleared his throat. "Y--you should be in bed, Ginny."

"So should you," she said.

He shook his head and went back to staring at the fire. After a little while, she got up and tiptoed away.

  


* * *

  


"I _wish_," Carmen said one day, "you would tell us what's going on, Ginny."

"Nothing's going on," Ginny denied.

"Stop lying," Jeremy said sharply.

"I'm not lying!"

"You are! You're pale and you don't eat and you've been chewing on your fingernails again, haven't you?"

Ginny hid her hands under her robes. "No I haven't."

Carmen said, "Look, you've got to tell us what's wrong before we can help you with it, you know . . ."

"Nothing's wrong! Would you stop bothering me about it? Who died and made you my mother anyway?"

Straight away, Ginny regretted her harsh words. Carmen's mouth fell open, and a wounded look stole into her eyes. Jeremy's face darkened. "If you're going to be _that_ way--"

Ginny reached out. "Oh, Carmen, I'm sorry--I didn't mean it--I didn't, really, I swear--"

Carmen was easily forgiving, but Jeremy was more persistant. "Then why'd you say it, eh?"

"I--" She had to tell them something. She couldn't tell them everything but _something--_

No, no, no--they'd want to know what it was. Jeremy didn't like not knowing something, and Carmen would never let her keep a secret like this. They'd worm it out of her eventually, and then--and then--

She leapt to her feet. "I'm not feeling well. I'm going to the infirmary."

"What?"

Jeremy and Carmen exchanged a glance. Ginny didn't like admitting that she wasn't feeling well; she'd keel over and die before staying in bed all day.

"You're not sick, you're just avoiding the question--"

"I am too; I feel sick to my stomach, Jeremy!" And it was true--Ginny felt as if she were going to throw up any minute, thinking what they would think of her if they knew--

"Do you want us to come with you?"

"No--I can find my own way there--"

"You're not allowed out on your own, you _know_ that--"

"I'll get Percy."

"You'll get me for what?"

Trapped. She'd meant to sneak out somewhere on her own, under the guise of going to the infirmary. It wasn't as if _she_ were in danger, after all. But Percy would make her go to the infirmary for real.

And he did, calling Madam Pomfrey up on the fire, holding on to her until the nurse arrived to escort them to the infimary. Then he announced that he was going with them.

Still sour over her unwanted excursion, Ginny said, "What? Why?"

"Mum told me to take care of you," he announced, as if it had been a mission from God.

"Percy, I'll be fine--"

He ignored her. "No offense, Madam Pomfrey," he told the nurse, "I just want to make sure. I'm going with you." He herded her toward the portrait hole. Once outside, Ginny found herself escorted along as if she were a dangerous criminal, Percy and Madam Pomfrey flanking her with wands out. The corridors were absolutely empty, and the echoes of their footsteps ran up the walls and hid in the carved arches of the ceiling The portraits turned to stare at them as they went past.

Ginny said in a small voice, "You know, I think I'm feeling a little better--"

"You'll get the potion anyway," Madam Pomfrey decreed.

"Even if I don't need it?"

"Just in case, Ginny," Percy added. "Fine thing it would be if I had to write Mum and tell her you were dead or something--" 

"I'm not _dead_, it's just an upset stomach--"

"You've got to take care of yourself, Ginny!"

"I'm trying!"

In the infirmary, Madam Pomfrey examined her for signs of real illness, then gave her a Stomach-Settler potion that smelt of paint-stripper. Ginny eyed it nervously.

"Down the hatch it goes," the nurse said briskly. "Don't mind the green tongue, dear, it goes away after twenty minutes." She looked around her crowded infirmary and sighed. "I don't know when I've had a worse year--all these Petrifications, and more people with fainting spells and sick headaches. It's all stress, mind you. I've always said it's worse than cholera and Otto's Indigo Ague combined."

"What does that do, turn you purple?"

"If only that were all it did. Better, dear?"

Ginny's stomach had settled the moment the potion hit it. She nodded.

"Very well, then, go get your brother and I'll escort both of you back."

Ginny hopped off the chair and looked around for Percy. Surprisingly, he'd given her privacy during the examination. He was sitting over in the corner reserved for the Petrification victims. Ginny's stomach turned at the thought of going near to them, but she didn't want to shout out in the middle of the infirmary. She approached reluctantly.

"Penny," he was saying. "Penny, the Mandrakes are going to be done soon. It's going to be all right, I promise."

Ginny's mouth fell open.

Percy wiped his nose with a sniff that was probably louder than he'd meant it to be. "I'm sorry I didn't take care of you, Pen. I promised--and I broke that promise. I'm so sorry." He touched her, and if she hadn't been Petrified, he would have been smoothing a stray curl back from her forehead. "I--I won't ever fail you again."

"P-_Percy?"_

He jolted around, his face going beet-red in a moment. "Ginny!"

She looked from him to the Petrified girl. "What was that you were doing?"  
"Nothing!" he said too loudly, leaping to his feet. "Nothing!"

"Were you talking to her?"

He bore down on her, shaking his finger. His eyes were suspiciously red. "If you tell anybody about this--"

She backed away hastily. "I won't, I won't!"

He eyed her narrowly. "You _promise?"_

"Yes!"

"Very well then. Come on." He drew his wand and marched away. After a moment of stunned amazement, Ginny darted after him.


	12. The Chamber of Secrets

  


The Chamber of Secrets

  


She couldn't sleep that night. She pretended to, in order to allay Carmen's suspicions, but long after all the other beds emitted deep breathing and soft snores, Ginny lay awake.

This had gone too far. She'd _let_ it go too far. She had to tell someone. She'd pretended to herself that she could handle it, that she didn't need anyone's help, that she was grown-up enough. But she wasn't, and that foolish illusion had done more harm than she'd thought possible.

She'd hurt two of her brothers terribly by not taking the diary to someone the moment she'd got it back. That had led to her attack on Hermione, Ron and Harry's good friend (no matter what Ginny personally thought of her), and Penny, Percy's . . . Percy's . . . 

She thought of the way her brother had sniffed, and the way his eyes had shone even as he'd tried to cover it up. With a little cry, she turned over and buried her face in her pillow.

She would get suspended. She would get expelled. She would get put in Azkaban. 

But Ginny bit her lip. Was she really going to put herself over all the people she could hurt?

She had to put the diary out of her hands, and herself out of _his_ reach. She could burn it, as she'd meant to. But something told Ginny that she would never do it. Something would always stop her. Someone had to take it out of her hands, someone stronger than her silly self who would have no qualms about destroying it.

But could she possibly go to?

Professor Dumbledore would know. Ron said Harry admired the headmaster more than anything. He knew everything_,_ Ron had said, and even when they'd broken rules--maybe Professor Dumbledore would understand--

Ginny's stomach dropped when she remembered that he wasn't here anymore--the school governors had suspended him. They would probably sack him. Professor McGonagall was in charge now.

March right up and tell Professor McGonagall that she was the one? Oh, no, she couldn't--she couldn't--she couldn't--

"I have to," said a voice. After a moment, Ginny recognized it as her own. "I have to," she said more softly. "I have to."

She got up out of bed, carefully climbing over the books and noisemakers, which she'd set up again after the double attack. She couldn't sleep anyway, and if she tried, Tom might get at her in her dreams. She couldn't afford to risk that, now that she knew exactly what it was that was in the Chamber of Secrets. She'd been terribly lucky that nobody had died--Petrified was bad enough.

She clambered into the window seat and very carefully wedged pins into cracks between the stones in as many places as she could manage. If she started to fall asleep, she would relax, and the pins would prick her. 

Then she turned her face to the window and watched the stars.

  


* * *

  


"Have you been up all night, Ginny?"

The appalled voice jerked Ginny out of her exhausted haze. She'd been floating in a warm dream of her mother's arms, and the comfort of her own bed at home, with her favorite soft toy, Sparkle the unicorn, at her side. It had been a time before Hogwarts, a time before Tom, and everything had been right. Her brothers were still wonderful instead of horrible, she hadn't been mad at her mother, and nothing was ever so wrong that a hug couldn't cure.

She turned on the window seat to see Carmen staring at her. "I--I couldn't sleep," she said.

Carmen squinted at her, a puzzled look on her face. "You looked like you were doing a pretty good job of it."

Ginny couldn't think of anything to say to that, so she just shrugged.

"You look terrible. Honestly you do. Your eyes are bloodshot and you're really pale and you-- Look, go to bed and go to sleep, all right? I'll tell the teachers you're not feeling well. Nobody's doing much of anything today anyway."

Ginny jolted the rest of the way awake. "No--no, I can't!"

"Are you sure, Ginny?"

"Yes! Very sure." Ginny climbed down off the window seat and hurried over to her wardrobe, diving in for her clothes.

Carmen's voice percolated through Ginny's rustlings. "Ginny, honestly--it's not like you to be this hot on going to class--"

Class? Who cared about class? "I'm fine!" Ginny wiggled out of her night-gown and into clean robes.

"But--"

"I'll get some sleep later--" Ginny pawed through the piles of robes, knickers, and socks at the bottom of her wardrobe. She couldn't find a hair clip and her hair was falling all around her shoulders and into her face in thick, bright tangles.

"It's an hour and a half until breakfast, Ginny!"

"I'll do some studying or something--_ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" _Surprising even herself, she burst into tears and thumped down on the floor.

Carmen knelt down. "I knew something was wrong! Now what is it?"

"I--can't--find--a--perishing--h-h-h-h-air--c-c-cli-hi-hi-hip!" Ginny wailed, hiccuping.

"Shh--shh! You're going to wake the whole dormitory! It's all right, you can borrow one of mine. Come on, let's go to the bathroom."

Ginny in bare feet and robes and Carmen still in her pyjamas, they snuck down the stairs to the bathroom at the base of the tower. This early in the morning, the only other occupants were the die-hard mirror hounds, and none of them paid any attention to a pair of first-years. Ginny stood mute and white before the mirror as Carmen brushed her hair. She didn't even say anything when Carmen started braiding the sides before catching them back in the clip, although she normally had no patience with Carmen's more elaborate ideas for hairstyles.

"I wish you'd tell me what's wrong, Ginny," Carmen said in a low voice. "And don't say 'nothing.' You've been like this for months, and it's only gotten worse lately. What aren't you telling us?"

Ginny stared at herself in the mirror and hated everything she saw. If only she hadn't been so stupid as to trust in Tom--and to let him become her whole world--and then not telling anyone--and keeping on not telling anyone--

That was her whole problem, keeping secrets, keeping them far beyond the point where she should have told someone. She kept too many secrets, when she had ought to be telling them. No more secrets, she vowed. Never again.

She opened her mouth.

**Don't you dare, you silly little girl.**

She gulped so quickly she made a strange croaking sound. 

Carmen said, "Ginny--?"

Had she really just heard Tom's voice?

"Ginny?"

It was gone. She could hear nothing but her own too-quick breathing.

But the moment had shattered her resolve, and she was once again a shivering wreck. She couldn't tell Carmen--she couldn't--she couldn't! She was even starting to wonder if she could bear to tell Professor McGonagall--

But no--she had to tell. She had to stop all this. She had to stop Tom.

She had to stop herself.

"Carmen," Ginny said softly.

"Yes?"

Ginny looked into Carmen's anxious face, reflected by the mirror. "Thank you."

"For what? Your hair?"

"Y--no--that too--"

"You're not making any sense."

Ginny whirled and threw her arms around Carmen. "Thank you for being my friend," she sobbed. "Just--thank you."

Carmen hugged her back. "You're welcome, but Ginny--"

Ginny broke away and ran.

  


* * *

  


She consciously avoided Jeremy and Carmen until it was time to go down to breakfast, ducking behind people and furniture as she waited for Professor McGonagall to arrive.

When she arrived, Ginny thought about trying to talk to her right there, but there were too many people around. Then the professor's manner was so brisk and exasperated, as she herded people out of the common room and down to breakfast, that Ginny's courage ebbed away altogether. She couldn't even ask for an interview later. 

She sat down far away from Jeremy and Carmen, who gave her wounded looks. She stared at the toast on her plate, but she couldn't even smell it without wanting to throw up.

_I can't put it off any longer--_

****

If you do, you'll suffer more than you thought possible.

She caught her breath. There it was again--Tom's voice--

Was she going mad?

**Mad? You'll wish you had when I'm done with you. I've gone beyond needing a silly book to control you, Virginia Myrtle Weasley. That was dumb, telling me your full name, you know. Names have power. And you've given me enough of yourself that I can exercise that power.**

She had told him her full name, hadn't she? Back when she'd first found the diary. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

_I don't care for anything you can do to me,_ she lied. _I've got to tell someone. _

****

Who are you going to tell? Your precious Harry Potter?

Her mouth fell open. Harry. Of course, Harry! He wasn't nearly as scary as Professor McGonagall, and after last year . . . yes, Harry would know what to do! _Yes! _she thought defiantly. _I've got to tell Harry._

**Stupid little girl. What can he do?**

__

When I tell Harry about you, he'll know what to do! He will! He defeated You-Know-Who! No matter what you do to me, you can't TOUCH him. He's got powers nobody knows anything about, so there!

**That I would like to see. **His sardonic laughter rang in her ears from within. 

How could she have ever trusted him?

At the front of the hall, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet. "I have good news."

The Great Hall erupted in cheers and shouted speculation. Under the table, Ginny's hands found each other and clenched together. If she'd had any nails left, they would have drawn blood.

"Professor Sprout has informed me that the Mandrakes are ready for cutting at last. Tonight, we will be able to revive those people who have been Petrified. I need hardly remind you that one of them may well be able to tell us who, or what, attacked them. I am hopeful that this dreadful year will end with our catching the culprit."

Ginny went cold all over. _The culprit_--it sounded just as bad as it had the night of the double attack. The tone of Professor McGonagall's voice made it clear what sort of fate awaited that culprit.

**They'll put you in Azkaban, Ginny. You don't want that, do you?**

She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears, but the voice wasn't physical and it wouldn't help. _I'm not listening to you! I'm not! I'm not!_

**You did before. You know what I can do to you. You know.**

_I don't care about me anymore! I deserve it for listening to you!_

Perversely, the more he taunted and threatened her, the higher her courage surged. This was what he really was, a nasty bully. No matter what happened to her, she was going to see to it that he got what he deserved. She got up.

**SIT DOWN!**

_NO!_

Gritting her teeth against the constant stream of threats echoing in her head, Ginny made her way over to where Harry and Ron sat, their heads together over their bacon. Ron was saying, "It might be kinder to leave her where she is until they're over." Ginny didn't know he was talking about, and she didn't care. He glanced over at her as she sat down next to him. "What's up?"

She tried to open her mouth three times and three times she failed. She looked up and down the table, praying that nobody but her brother and Harry were listening in.

"Spit it out," Ron told her.

**I'll set the Basilisk on you, Ginny, do you hear me? On you! And there'll be no handy little tricks like those Mudbloods used!**

"I've got to tell you something," she mumbled. She couldn't look at Harry, even though she wanted him to hear this.

"What is it?" he said.

Her lip wobbled.

**Don't you so much as open your mouth, you stupid--**

"_What?"_ Ron said. He finally seemed to have cottoned on that this was something important.

Ginny opened her mouth, but her throat had closed up. She was trembling all over, shaking like a leaf, too nervous to even chew her fingernails.

**Don't even think about it--**

Harry leaned over the table to her and said in a very low voice, "Is it something about the Chamber of Secrets?"

Her eyes widened. _How did he know?_

**You'll be sorry, I swear you'll regret it--**

Harry said, "Have you seen something? Someone acting oddly?"

_Yes--me--_I'm_ acting very oddly--_ Ginny opened her mouth and took a deep breath--

"If you've finished eating, I'll take that seat, Ginny."

_Oh, god, Percy!_

"I'm starving, I've just come off patrol duty."

She leapt out of her chair and bolted down the Great Hall between the tables. Behind her, she could hear Ron complaining. "_Percy!_ She was just about to tell us something important!"

"Ginny? Ginny!" someone called out. It sounded like Carmen. 

She couldn't face her friends now. She rocketed into a group of Hufflepuffs and hid herself in their depths until they'd passed into the entry way. Then she darted down a side corridor and slumped into an alcove.

Again, she wanted her mum's arms around her, more than anything she'd ever wanted before. She wanted this to go away. She just wanted it to go away.

Tom-in-her-head was silent. For one shining moment, she wondered if he had been banished just by the threat of Harry Potter. Then-- 

**That was stupid.**

She froze.

**I told you not to, Ginny. I told you what I'd do to you if you did.**

"I didn't," she whimpered out loud. "I didn't."

**You were going to. Get up.**

"No . . ."

**GET UP!**

Before, she had been able to resist, but her momentum was broken, and she rose to her feet.

**Now walk.**

"Where?"

**I'm taking you to the Chamber of Secrets.**

She burst into tears.

**Stop that caterwauling. You've only brought this upon yourself. **

_Oh, Mummy, Daddy, I'm so sorry--_

****

Shut up, he said absently. **The first thing we're going to do is let him know where you've gone.**

  


* * *

  


She stood in the Chamber of Secrets with the great statue at her back, but Ginny wasn't really aware of it. Whatever was left of her had curled into a tight ball inside her mind, repeating the same words over and over again.

_Harry, please. Mummy, Daddy, please. Someone help me. Please Harry. Oh please oh please oh please _

****

Stop that.

__

Please help oh HarryMummyDaddy please please

****

I said stop that, you twit.

_harrypleasemummyhelpmedaddyplease_

She screamed.

Something was tearing her apart from within, and the pain expanded in a dark bubble that filled her world and blotted out everything but itself. Agony, ripping pain--

Gone.

She crumpled to the stone floor of the Chamber, her body too weak to support her anymore. For a moment, the world faded before her eyes, and then it wavered back into view. Her hair spilled loose over her face and the dirty floor--she'd lost Carmen's hair clip somewhere. She couldn't even lift a hand to brush it aside, and she had to look through it like an orange cloud.

A blurred figure stood over her, black robed, black-haired. "H-Harry?" she whispered, straining to lift her heavy body. "Y-you came for me . . ."

The figure crouched, and several oddities registered. His hair was much neater than Harry's had ever attempted to be. He wore no glasses, and he sported no scar.

The boy smiled slowly, his green, green eyes glittering in a way that Harry's never had. "It's me."

"Tom," she breathed, and then everything went dark.

  


* * *

  


As they stepped into the third-floor hallway, Jeremy was in a bad mood. "Come on, Carmen, stop worrying about her. She's probably in class already. We're going to get in trouble."

"I'm telling you, she was acting strange this morning." Carmen stared around the hall. "Funny--I could have sworn I saw her come up this way--"

"So? She's always strange._ You're_ always strange. Why are girls so weird?"

"You didn't see her, Jeremy! She had something on her mind, and it must have been absolutely awful." Carmen sighed. "Sometimes I feel like she's got secrets that we're never going to know."

"You've been reading those dumb magazines. So what if she's not telling you something?"

Carmen pulled a face and groaned "_Boys!"_

He opened his mouth to retort, but a squeaky voice interrupted. "What are you doing up here?"

Jeremy groaned, and Carmen spun around. "Professor Flitwick!"

The little Charms professor was scuttling down the corridor towards them. "I know the Mandrakes are almost ready, but that doesn't mean the monster in the Chamber of Secrets is no longer around! Come along, I'm taking you to class--"

"Professor," Carmen blurted, "have you seen Ginny Weasley?"

Professor Flitwick paused. "No--"

"We're looking for her--"

"Carmen, lay off--" Jeremy muttered.

Carmen shook off Jeremy's hand. "We haven't seen her since breakfast, and we were worried--"

"She should be in class. Come along, you're due in Potions, aren't you? Off we go!"

"Oh, please, Professor, won't you at least let me check the bathroom? Just for a moment. What could it hurt?"

He hesitated, but Carmen said again, "Please?"

"Very well," he said. "Quickly, Miss Jordan, quickly!"

Carmen dashed down the corridor toward the bathroom, but she skidded to a halt before she even got there. "_Professor Flitwick!"_

On the wall opposite the bathroom, the warning about the Chamber of Secrets remained. But now, just underneath it, dripping letters read, _One has been taken. Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever . . . _

Jeremy and Professor Flitwick stopped just behind her. The little Charms professor slumped back against the wall, his hand over his heart. "Great Merlin!"

"But who?" Jeremy asked, investigating the letters. "It doesn't say who!" He looked at Carmen, the dawn of fear in his eyes. "You don't s'pose--but she's not--"

Professor Flitwick had recovered himself a little. "Albus--no, Minerva needs to know--come along, children, quickly now--"

Carmen's foot hit something that clanged and jingled across the stone floor. Momentarily distracted, she bent to pick it up, then let out a shrill scream that stopped the two males in their tracks.

"What is it?"

"What--"

Carmen burst into tears and held out the little silver clip. "Ginny," she wept. "Oh, Professor Flitwick, _Ginny!"_

  


* * *

  


Ginny felt curiously insubstantial, a soft fog drifting whichever way the wind blew it. She didn't like it above half. 

And she kept dissipating, spreading further and further out. She tried to gather herself together, and found nothing to gather. Where was it all? Where was _she_ all? There was just enough of her to realize how little there was. Tom had taken it. Tom had taken her from herself, until there was barely enough of her to _be_ a her anymore. And it kept pulling away, tendrils of fog drifting away from the main cloud, shrinking it faster and faster all the time.

_No!_

And then it all came back in a rush, bringing with it a piercing pain that flashed for a hot red moment and then was gone.

She burst through to consciousness like a diver breaking the surface. She could feel her fingers again, her toes--she remembered that she _had_ fingers and toes--lovely!

She opened her eyes and blinked several times. There was no heaviness, no langour. Her strength was all her own again. Her limbs trembled as she pushed herself up, as if they were quite as surprised to be back under her mastery as she was to have it.

She was awake and alive. Did that mean that Tom was gone? She had her self back again, and he never would have let her go of his own accord.

She pushed her hair out of her face. Then she saw the black-robed, black-haired figure at the far end of the Chamber, and for one instant, her entire body clenched in fear. 

_It was him._ He'd let her wake for another one of his horrid games. Maybe he'd wanted her to know it when he fed her to that dirty great snake . . . 

Which was sprawled across the Chamber, its head lying in a pool of blood.

Her eyes flashed back to the figure now rushing toward her, and registered the wildness of his hair, the glint of his glasses in the torchlight.

_Harry._

He looked very small, and very battered, and very bloody. There was a long tear in one of his sleeves, blood soaking the edges, but unaccountably, the arm inside looked perfectly fine. In that hand, he held (of all things) the school Sorting Hat, and in the other, an enormous sword, shining silver under blotches of dark, wet blood. Half his face was near-black with dirt, and the pink patches shone with sweat, and his hair was wilder than ever. But his eyes were bright with anxiety behind his glasses, which sat crooked on his nose.

_Harry!_

She burst into tears. 

"Harry--" she blubbered, "oh, Harry--I tried to tell you at b-breakfast, but I c-_couldn't_ say it in front of Percy--" She could hardly speak, but she couldn't stop either--it was as if a dam had burst inside of her, and if he wanted to hate her he could jolly well hate her because she _had_ to say it. "It was _me_, Harry--but I--I s-swear I d-didn't mean to--" She couldn't say _Tom_, she just couldn't. "R-Riddle made me, he t-took me over--and--_how_ did you kill that--that thing? W-where's Riddle? The last thing I r-remember is him coming out of the diary--"

But his eyes didn't narrow, and his mouth didn't turn down. Instead, he held up the diary and said quickly, "It's all right, Riddle's finished. Look! Him and the basilisk."

Ginny gaped at the diary, which had a huge, shining claw or fang or something buried in the middle, and the pages were soggy with ink. She didn't pretend to understand, but it really was ruined, a complete wreck. Nobody would ever write into or out of it again.

"C'mon, Ginny, let's get out of here--"

Out of here? Out of here! Out of here to someone's office, some teacher . . . because of course they'd want to know . . . 

"I'm going to be expelled!" she wailed, not even realizing that he had one hand under her elbow and was helping her up. "I've looked forward to coming to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill came and n-now I'll have to leave and--_w-what'll Mum and Dad say?_"

There was a beautiful red-gold bird hovering in the entrance of the Chamber, but Ginny couldn't spare any energy for curiosity right now. They had to climb over the dead body of the Basilisk, and her stomach turned at the thought of being this close to it, even if it couldn't hurt her anymore.

After her initial outpouring of the horrible truth, her insides were hollow and aching. She stayed silent, shivering and sticking close behind Harry as they trudged up the dark and dank corridor that Tom had led her down an eternity ago. Suddenly, Harry's head lifted, and his stride lengthened. "Ron!" he bellowed. "Ginny's okay! I've got her!"

Ginny looked up sharply. Ron was there? Ron was--?

Once again, her stomach turned. What would he say when Harry told him? For surely he would; they told each other everything.

There was a cheer, and then they turned a bend and Ginny saw her brother's face, peering dirty and disheveled through gap in a great pile of rock. "Ginny!" he yelped, shoving his hand out through the gap. 

She took it reluctantly and he pulled her through, babbling all the while, "You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened?"

When she'd gained her feet again, he tried to hug her, but she pushed him away, breaking into fresh tears. He was never going to hug her again when he found out what she'd done--never, never--

"But you're okay, Ginny," he tried to reassure her, peering anxiously into her face. "It's over now, it's--where did that bird come from?"

"He's Dumbledore's," came Harry's voice as he squeezed through the gap and skidded down the other side.

"How come you've got a sword?" Ron asked.

Ginny cried harder than ever, thinking, _Now he'll tell--_

"I'll explain when we get out of here," Harry said in a low voice.

"But--"

"Later."

_But it's only a temporary reprieve--_

"Where's Lockhart?" Harry asked Ron. 

"Back there. He's in a bad way. Come and see."

Ginny followed them automatically. She was too much of a mess to halfway pay attention to even the tableau of Lockhart, grimy and disheveled, sitting and humming to himself. As Ron explained to Harry something about Memory Charms, the bird landed next to Ginny and crooned at her.

Her tears slowed a little, and she reached out tentatively and petted it down along its neck and one wing. The golden feathers were soft and warm under her fingers. There was blood on its beak. "Poor bird," she whispered to it. "Did you get hurt?"

The bird tilted its head a little, then took off in a flurry of gold. Ginny found herself with a shining gold feather in her hand, about the length of an ordinary quill. It was still warm from the bird's body.

"He looks like he wants you to grab hold . . ." Ron was saying slowly. "But you're much too heavy for a bird to pull up there--"

"Fawkes isn't an ordinary bird," Harry said. His brows pulled together a moment. "We've got to hold on to each other. Ginny, grab Ron's hand."

Ginny made no move, but Ron reached out and caught her hand in his. They hadn't held hands for a few years, ever since Ron got old enough to be scornful of his little sister and had relegated her to their mother's care. Now his fingers were warm and strong around hers, as protective as they'd once been.

Harry continued. "Professor Lockhart--"

"He means you," Ron said to Lockhart.

"You hold Ginny's other hand--"

Ginny thrust the gold feather in her pocket just before Lockhart's limp hand bumped into her arm and she had to take it. All of a sudden, her body seemed to dissolve, becoming weightless. Suddenly terrified, she looked down at herself, but she was still there.

Then they were off, flying up through the pipes. The slimy walls and the washes of cold air brought back horrible half-remembered dreams, and she just wanted to kick Lockhart as he said, "Amazing! Just like magic!"

Then they thumped onto a hard, wet surface, skidding together and piling up like a three-broom collision. 

Ginny lifted her head and blinked. They were back in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

"You're alive," the ghost said to Harry.

"There's no need to sound so disappointed," he told her, cleaning his glasses on his robes.

"Oh, well . . . I'd just been thinking . . . if you had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet," she simpered.

Ron was delighted. "Urgh! Harry! I think Myrtle's got _fond_ of you!" He elbowed Ginny in the ribs. "You've got competition, Ginny!"

But she had started crying again at the thought that Harry could have _died_ in the Chamber of Secrets, right along with her. All the way down the corridor, as they followed Fawkes, Ron kept trying to pat her shoulder or look into her face, but she wouldn't let him.

They stopped in front of a door that Ginny didn't recognize. Harry knocked and pushed the door open.

And there--sitting in front of the fireplace--were her parents.


	13. Mum and Dad

  


Mum and Dad

  


(A/N) Okay, I know the Harry scene isn't strictly canon. But I really really wanted to put it in.

"_Ginny!"_

In the instant before she was enfolded in her parents' combined embrace, Ginny saw the ravages of tears on their faces. Caught up in the sheer emotion of seeing them, she wasn't thinking about what was going to happen when Harry explained what she'd done. She could only hug them back and cry. "Mum, oh Mummy I was so _scared_ Mum I really really was--"

"Ginny, don't you ever--"

"We thought we'd lost you forever--"

"I wanted you so much! I'm so sorry, Daddy!"

Her mother turned away, reaching out and hugging Harry and Ron tightly to her for a moment. "You saved her! You saved her! _How_ did you do it?"

"I think we'd all like to know that," said a new voice.

Ginny realized that her parents were not the only occupants of the office--Professor McGonagall, white and gasping, was there, and Professor Dumbledore himself stood by the mantelpiece, smiling widely.

Harry stepped away from Ginny's mum and walked to the desk and put everything down that he carried. Battered Sorting Hat, bloody sword and--Ginny forced herself to look at it--ruined diary.

Then he began to speak.

Ginny's eyes grew wider and wider with each word that dropped from his lips. He had actually _heard_ the Basilisk in the pipes, whispering to him all year in Parseltongue--Hermione had figured it out--he and Ron had gone into the Forbidden Forest and infiltrated a nest of gigantic spiders to ask about the Chamber of Secrets. Ron! Ron with his incredible fear of spiders had actually_ lived_ through that!

She wanted to look at him, but then Harry broke the news that Tom's victim, so many years ago, had been--of all people--_Moaning Myrtle!_

**_I once knew a girl named Myrtle. She was extremely tiresome._**

Ginny wanted to be ill. She turned her face into her mother's shoulder, her first movement since the beginning of Harry's recitation, and her mother stroked her hair gently.

"Very well," said Professor McGonagall when he paused, "so you found out where the entrance was--breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add--but how on _earth_ did you all get out of there alive, Potter?"

He had been down in the Chamber of Secrets, face-to-face with Tom, and then Fawkes the phoenix had come to his rescue with the Sorting Hat, which had given him the sword that he'd used to kill the Basilisk. Then Harry's voice faltered and stumbled to a stop, and as if it were a physical touch, Ginny felt his eyes on her. The silent tears that had never stopped redoubled their course down her cheeks. What would he say? What had Tom said? How much did they _know?_

"What interests _me_ most," said Professor Dumbledore in a queerly gentle voice, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."

Ginny's head shot up.

_You-Know-Who?_

Impossible--no, it couldn't be--it had been Tom--it had all been Tom--

"W-what's that?" her dad's voice said behind her. "_You-Know-Who?_ En-enchant _Ginny?_ But Ginny's not . . . Ginny hasn't been . . ." He stopped and Ginny looked up at him. "Has she?"

"It was this diary," Harry answered swiftly, picking it up. It looked very small and very scorched in his hand. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen. . . ."

Dumbledore took it and examined it minutely. "Brilliant. Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen." He looked up and over at Ginny and her parents, and for a moment it seemed as if his light blue eyes bored right down into Ginny, seeing everything. "Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle."

Tom was--Tom was _You-Know-Who?_

Ginny looked quickly at Harry, who was watching Dumbledore with pure admiration as the headmaster spoke of Tom's transformation into You-Know-Who. Harry hadn't said anything about her, nothing to indicate what she'd done or what Tom had made her do. He was protecting her, which was _just_ like him of course, but--

But--

She couldn't lie anymore, not to herself, not to her brothers, not to Mum and Dad. She just couldn't stand it. She'd told Harry, but that wasn't enough, because she knew that if it didn't come out, he would keep her secret until the very grave. Now that she knew what Tom really was, it was more important than ever for her to tell the truth.If she wanted to be as grown-up as she'd always wanted to be, and tried to be, this whole year she was going to have to--

"But, Ginny," Mum said, and Ginny knew it wasn't an address to her. "What's our Ginny got to do with--with--_him_?"

No more secrets.

Ginny opened her mouth, meaning to be calm and collected, to confess very maturely to her actions, but what came out was nearer a wail. "His d-diary! I've been writing in it, and he's been w-writing back all year--"

"_Ginny_!" her dad exclaimed, his face aghast. "Haven't I taught you _anything_? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself _if you can't see where it keeps its brain._ Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was _clearly_ full of Dark magic!"

"I d-didn't knoooooooooooow," Ginny blubbered, tears coursing down her face again. "I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it--"

"Miss Weasley--" at Dumbledore's voice, Ginny fell instantly silent, "--should go up to the hospital wing right away. This has been a terrible ordeal for her." 

He was going to expel her. She knew it. He was, and she didn't blame him because what headmaster in his right mind would want a girl in his school that had been possessed by You-Know-Who? 

"There will be no punishment."

She lifted her head, feeling tears drip off her chin. She wanted him to repeat it--those beautiful words--_There will be no punishment._ But--oh, but _why?_

"Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort." He went to the door and opened it wide. "Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up," he added, giving her a warm, forgiving look. 

At that moment, it was as if she'd swallowed up the chocolate already, for the warmth that filled her insides made every horrible doubt, every tear shed, every minute of grief fade. It was not that his kindness had canceled it out--it was still there. But his look said, _I know what this has been for you, my dear, and you have been punished enough. _ That was why there would be no expulsion, no suspension, not even a detention. He knew what her punishment had been already.

"You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She's just giving out the Mandrake juice--I daresay the Basilisk's victims will be waking up any moment."

"So Hermione's okay!" Ron exclaimed.

"There has been no lasting harm done, Ginny," Dumbledore reassured her again.

Her mum's arm slipped around her waist, and she led Ginny out of the office. They stopped just outside, and her mother held her away for a moment, examining her minutely for missing limbs. Then she hugged her again. "Ginny, Ginny--"

Ginny buried her face in her mother's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Mummy," she mumbled.

She felt her dad's arms wrap around both of them. "But Ginny," he said. "Why didn't you write us about this? Why didn't you tell one of your brothers?"

"I didn't know," she said again. "I didn't understand what was happening, and then when I did--" She looked up at them. "I thought nobody would care. I didn't think anyone cared about me."

Her mother's arms tightened convulsively. "Those boys--" she started to say furiously.

"Molly," her dad said. "Ginny, did _he_ tell you that?"

"Not exactly, but he helped." 

Her father extricated her from her mother's arms, and knelt so he was on her level. "Virginia," he said. "Nobody in this family is _ever_ unwanted, or uncared for." His eyes, red and swollen, bored into hers. "_Nobody_. Understand?"

A smile wobbled over her face. "Yes, Daddy."

He gave her shoulders a little shake. "Good." Then he pulled her into his arms again.

"Mum!"

They all looked up. Percy was hurrying down the corridor towards them, and for a moment he didn't see her. "Mum--Dad--" he croaked, and then he saw her. "Ginny!" he cried out, and grabbed her up in a hug.

She could have sworn she felt ribs crack before he let her go, peering into her face. "How--what--?" His own face was blotchy red and white, almost as if he'd been crying.

Their mother hugged them both at once. "Harry and Ron went after her, Percy! They actually got her out of the Chamber of Secrets!"

"I don't understand," Percy said blankly. He still had her by the upper arms, as if reassuring himself that she was real.

"It's a long story," her dad told him, looping his arm comfortingly over Ginny's shoulder, "and she's very tired, Percy. We're taking her to the infirmary."

He looked up. "Of course, Dad."

She snuffled away tears. It was tempting to just go along with them, but she had to tell Percy--so he'd _know_--

"Percy," she said, in a thin thread of a voice. "Percy, I need to--"

"It can wait," he told her, "let's get you to the infirmary--"

She wrenched away from him. "_No!_" Her voice rose, shrill, and Percy stopped.

"All right, Ginny, all right," he said placatingly. "Maybe just to the dormitory--"

"I'll go to the infirmary, but, Percy, I need to tell you--"

"Ginny, can't it wait?"

"No, Mum!" She clenched her fists in her robe and spoke as quickly as she could. "It was me--I was doing all those things. _I_ released the monster in the Chamber of Secrets."

He stared at her as blankly as he had when he'd realized she was alive. "I--don't understand."

She looked at her feet. "I did something really stupid, and the--the Heir of Slytherin sort of took me over." Her brain froze up, trying to imagine Tom--even treacherous Tom--as--as--You-Know-Who. "I honestly didn't mean to, but that doesn't matter, because I _did_ and--I'm so sorry, Percy! I'm so sorry, especially about Penny, you don't even know--"

"Penny?" her dad said.

Percy didn't even look up at him. "Y-you? _You,_ Ginny?"

She nodded mutely.

"This is why you've been so strange all year?" He looked as if he were thinking of the Mudblood incident. 

She nodded again, feeling more slow tears trickle down her face.

"Oh, Ginny," he sighed, and put his arms around her again.

Then the waterworks really started, because he was being so kind instead of scolding her. She sobbed into her brother's shoulder while he awkwardly patted her hair and told her she was sorry and that was what counted and even though she really should have known better she was very brave to have owned up to it in the end, and Penny was being revived and she would be all right, and he wasn't mad, honestly he wasn't . . . 

As soon as she'd run out of tears, he patted her shoulder one last time. Their mum was crying a little too, but she smiled waterily at them. 

"Up on my back, Ginny?" he asked.

She blinked up at him through swollen eyes. He hadn't given her a piggyback ride in years, ever since his third year at Hogwarts, when he'd inexplicably decided he was really much too old and dignified to be giving piggyback rides. He made a face at her--another thing he hadn't done in ages. "Come on, now, I'm waiting--"

She clambered up and he set off down the hall, grunting a little, because she wasn't eight years old anymore. But he didn't put her down. She laid her head against his back and sighed, then drowsed. 

When they reached the infirmary, she woke up enough to drink her hot chocolate, then slipped in between cool, soft sheets. Her mother sat with her, stroking her hair. "I shan't scold you, Ginny," she said in a low voice. "I'm sure you know how wrong it was."

"Mhm," Ginny murmured.

"Now don't you think we don't love you ever again, you hear me, Virginia Myrtle Weasley?"

Even her horrible middle name made her smile into her pillow. Her ribs still ached from Percy's hug.

Ginny slept.

  


* * *

  


"Shhhh, she's still asleep, see--"

"It's gone ten in the morning, she should be awake--oy, Ginny!"

"Sh-shhhhhh!"

Ginny blinked her eyes open to see three faces hovering over her. "I'm awake, I'm awake," she said, struggling to sit up. 

"Look at that, you woke her up!" Carmen reproached Jeremy.

"Did not, she was awake already--weren't you?"

Ginny giggled. "Yes." Then she focused on the third face. "Colin! You're all right!"

He grinned. "Woke up last night." His face fell. "My camera got melted--I lost all the pictures from the Quidditch match. My parents sent another, though, while I was Petrified." He held it up. "Isn't it great? It's got--"

"Never mind that," Carmen said. "Ginny, you're all right, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm--I'll be fine."

"But why was it you that got taken? Nobody will tell us anything. You're pureblood--there was no reason--"

"Your brother said yesterday that it was because you knew something," Jeremy said. "Is that it? What did you know? Whyn't you tell us?"

For just a moment, she thought of making something up. But she'd been living a lie for the entire year, and even if it lost her their friendship, she couldn't do it any longer. "I--" She swallowed. "I did know something. I knew practically everything. I was the one doing it."

For once in his life, Jeremy had nothing to say. All three of them stared at her, their mouths hanging open.

"You remember that diary? The one I wrote in all the time? It was enchanted, and it enchanted me. It made me do all those things. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't tell anyone. I couldn't."

Jeremy found his voice. "I thought you lost it."

"I did. I . . . found it again."

"Oh."

Carmen said, "This was what was bothering you then."

Ginny nodded mutely.

"That explains a lot."

Silence fell again. None of the three seemed to know what to say.

"Colin--" Ginny said, and stopped in confusion. What could she say? She'd just told him to his face that she was the one who'd robbed him of practically his entire first year. "Don't hate me," she finally said in a small, foolish voice.

"Hate _you_?" Colin said. "What d'you mean, hate _you?"_

"I did this to you."

"'S not your fault," Colin said staunchly. "I'll hate the git who enchanted you, but not you."

"What kind of fairweather friends d'you think we are?" Jeremy burst out.

It was balm to her wounds, but one person had yet to react out loud. "Carmen?" she said in her smallest voice yet.

"I'm with Jeremy," Carmen said quietly. "What kind of fairweather friends do you think we are?" She took Ginny's hands. "I wish you'd told us, but Colin's right. We'll hate the one who did this to you, but not you."

"I didn't want to lose you," Ginny said. "I was so scared of losing you."

"Never," Carmen said, and her hands tightened around Ginny's. 

The two girls had to cry a little together, while the two boys coughed and looked embarrassed and pretended to have colds so they could blow their noses. Finally, Carmen wiped her eyes and her nose and sat up straight. "Now," she said, not letting go of Ginny's hands. "Tell us everything."

"Yeah," Jeremy said, looking relieved to have all the sniffling done with. "Don't leave out a single detail."

In a voice that grew steadily stronger, she told them everything, watching the way their eyes widened or their mouths fell open or the little exclamations they let out at key points in the story. Finally, she'd brought them up to the point where she'd left Dumbledore's office.

"Wow," Jeremy said. "He's really not going to punish you at all?"

She shook her head. "I don't really know why, except maybe he knows what it was like."

"Punishment enough," Carmen added.

"Something like that."

"Well," Colin said. "Harry didn't get punished either. He got a whole load of points and trophies and things."

"What about Ron?" Ginny asked anxiously.

"Oh, him too, I guess."

Carmen's eyes opened wide. "Ginny! Ginny! Harry rescued you! Just like a knight in shining armor!"

Ginny's mouth fell open. "I never thought of that--he really did, didn't he?" She frowned. "I don't remember knights in shining armor getting so dirty, though."

Carmen sighed and flopped across the bed. "How romantic!"

They looked at each other and started giggling madly. Jeremy groaned.

Colin said, "Are they always like this?"

"Only about him. I'm glad you got un-Petrified, though. S'my only chance to get some sense into this group."

Colin took his picture.

  


* * *

  


At Madam Pomfrey's huffy behest, they left an hour and a half later, still arguing over the camera

"Come on, Colin, lay off for two seconds, right?" 

"Oh, let him, it saved his life. But _not_ in the face, Colin, no flashbulbs in the face."

"Aww--"

"Okay, maybe if you warn me."

Ginny had some time to hug herself and revel in the glory of having friends who knew all about her and still liked her. The warm glow of that had hardly faded away before she heard a familiar voice. "Right, okay, but if she's _awake_--"

"She needs her rest!"

"But chess isn't hard! She falls asleep during chess!"

The last time she'd fallen asleep during a chess game with Ron, she'd been nine, and it had been three in the morning, and they'd been having a best-of-three that had turned into best-of-fifteen. In the morning, Ron had claimed that the decisive bout was his, because she'd knocked over her king when she'd fallen asleep. She'd retorted that it was a perfectly permissible request for a break, and she'd been winning all night anyhow. It was an ongoing argument.

She was looking forward to continuing it.

Ron came around the corner, looking mulish. "One game," he was muttering. "Peh."

"I do _not_ fall asleep during chess," she said.

"Not so loud, you want Madam Pomfrey over here saying I have to leave?"

Oops. "No."

"Right then."

He started setting up the chess pieces, and she realized something. "Ron! What happened to your hands?"

They were bound up in shining white bandages, both of them, and she didn't see how her brother could even move his fingers. He looked down at them blankly, then seemed to remember. "Oh--! It's from the rocks."

"The--?"

"You remember that great pile of rocks you climbed over--"

"Yeah--"

"Well, I was trying to move them so I could maybe get in and help you and Harry in the Chamber of Secrets." He gave a forlorn little shrug. "Sorry I didn't--it sounded really scary."

"Oh, _Ron_," Ginny said sadly.

"They'll be all right," he reassured her quickly. "Madam Pomfrey put some stuff on them and said they'd be all right in a day or two, just not to use them really until then." He grinned at her. "Good job exams are canceled, eh?"

She smiled a little.

"I mean, it could've been worse--I could've lost you _and_ had to sit exams--"

She had to laugh then, because the statement was so--well--_Ron._

He laughed too, then his face sobered and became rather fierce. "You know, you really do have people who care about you--you know that, right? So you didn't have to go to some rubbishy old diary, you hear?"

"I know that _now_," Ginny said.

"Right. Just so's you're clear on that." He adjusted the chess set on her tray. "Come on, let's play."

He let her win the first time. Then she made him play honestly, and laughed delightedly when she really did beat him. 

All through the long, golden afternoon, they played, arguing amiably, crowing in victory and scowling in defeat. Sitting with her chin in her hand, narrowly watching her brother's hand as it hovered over the board, Ginny felt as if the whole year of ignoring and bitterness on both sides was starting to fade.

He made his move, and looked up at her with a grin. "Ha! How d'you like that, eh?"

She got a good look at the board. "Hey! You just--ooohh!"

He roared with laughter.

After three more games, all of which he won, he left for dinner. Ginny was watching the pattern of the leaves on the window and seriously contemplating a nap when Madam Pomfrey's voice intruded.

"Miss Weasley? Are you up to more visitors?"

Ginny was about to say no when another voice said, "Of course she is, she's a Weasley, i'n't she?"

"Constitution like a rock."

"Metabolism like a hyperactive ferret."

"Could wrestle a troll in the morning and swim the lake in the afternoon."

"We're sturdy like that. Bounce like india-rubber balls."

"It's your brothers Fred and George," Madam Pomfrey said, unnecessarily. "They've just brought you some of your--homework."

Ginny mouthed, _Homework? _in utter disbelief, but sat up and said, "All right."

Her brothers swarmed into her little cubicle, Fred swishing the curtains closed behind him while George slung the bag he held onto her bed.

"_Homework_?"

"We just said that to get it through Madam Pomfrey," George said in a low voice, opening up the top of the bag. "We thought we'd bring you a little something, since you missed the feast--"

"Ruddy bad luck, that, it was a _great_ feast--" Fred removed four apples, a pudding, half a sponge cake, and a leg of lamb from the bag.

"And anyway, you've got to keep your strength up." George reached into the bag and pulled out five bananas, three rolls, half a chicken, an army-sized tin of biscuits, the other half of the chicken, and a flask of pumpkin juice she could have swum laps in.

Ginny goggled at the bounty. "How much strength am I keeping up, exactly?"

Fred snorted with laughter and pushed the sponge cake into her hand.

Throughout the meal, her brothers were in high good spirits--cracking the most outrageously awful puns they could think up, doing hysterically accurate imitations of professors, and arm-wrestling each other for the second drumstick (they'd let Ginny eat the first one). It wasn't until they were working their way through the tin of biscuits that George gave Fred a poke in the ribs. 

Fred looked back at him, and George nodded. Fred took a deep breath. "Listen, Gin--"

She sensed seriousness, coming on like an avalanche, and set down her biscuit. "Yes?"

"Percy told us."

"Everything."

"About you and that--"

"Don't be mad at him."

"We wouldn't let up."

"Well, we were concerned, weren't we."

"'S a good job he's gone, is all I have to say."

"Not Percy."

"_Him."_ Fred pronounced the syllable as if it were a particularly nasty hex.

"We would have beat him up for you."

"I can't believe you didn't say anything."

"Well, you were enchanted and all that."

"Understandable, I guess."

They squinted at her. "Say something, Wee One," George said in a desperate voice.

"You're saying it all," she said.

"Oh. Right."

Silence fell. 

George poked Fred again. Fred cleared his throat. "And . . . about before."

"Before what?" Although she thought she knew.

Fred and George looked at each other, looked at her, and looked away. They were positively squirming.

"We--we didn't know anything was _wrong._"

"We thought you were just being--you know--moody."

"All our teasing and that--we were just--"

"Sort of--"

"Trying to--"

"Toughen you up," George said.

"Yeah," Fred said. "Toughen you up." He started to aim a light punch at her arm, then apparently thought better of it.

"We're sorry, if that helps," George added.

"Honestly we are. We felt like _slime_, all day yesterday."

"Snakebellies."

"Beetle feet."

"Little bits of chewing gum on the _bottom_ of beetle feet."

Ginny nibbled her biscuit into a fingernail moon and wondered whether to put her brothers out of their misery. They looked positively downcast, sitting on either side of the foot of her bed. George wasn't even eating his banana. "You meant well," she said finally. "It's all right."

They brightened. "You mean that?"

"Really?"

"Of course." Ginny daintily bit her fingernail-moon biscuit in half.

Fred grinned widely. "And some of it was fun, anyway."

"Remember that one mask--the purple one--"

"With the green spots--"

"That one was _horrifying_," Ginny said sternly. "It put me off my dinner."

Their shoulders sagged. "Oh."

"For three days straight, mind you."

"Pond scum," Fred said gloomily. "_All day._"

"And well you should. That was an absolutely horrid mask." Ginny swallowed the last of her biscuit and reached for another one. "Can I borrow it?"

The twins laughed so hard they fell off her bed.

  


* * *

  


Full and delightfully happy, Ginny was just snuggling down into bed when one last voice echoed through the infirmary. "Madam Pomfrey? Um--is Ginny Weasley awake?"

Ginny sat straight up, all thoughts of sleep fleeing.

"She might be, but I'd really rather you not disturb her, Potter. She's had a steady stream of visitors all day, and her brothers just brought up a _great_ deal more food than was good for her."

"Oh." He sounded a little downcast, and Ginny nearly bit the end of her finger off in mingled despair and delight. "Could you--I mean--just for a little--"

"I honestly think she should get some sleep."

Somewhere, Ginny got up the courage to call out, "I had loads of sleep last night, Madam Pomfrey. I can see Harry for a little bit."

Madam Pomfrey looked as if she wanted to argue this, but she looked from Ginny's face to Harry's, then said, "Ten minutes. Not a second more." She swept away, leaving Harry standing at the foot of her bed.

He looked at his feet, then at her, then at his hand, resting on the iron bedstead. She noticed that he had a scrape along his hairline and his glasses were sitting crookedly on his nose.

"All right then?" he asked finally.

"Mm-hmm," she said. "You?" For once the words were coming out normally--maybe she'd be all right as long as she kept to monosyllables.

"All right," he said.

She said, "Thank you," feeling she ought to. "Um. Sit down?"

"Sure."

She passed him the biscuit tin, which was about half-full still. He took three and passed it back.

She took one for herself, even though she wasn't hungry, and they sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment, eating so they wouldn't have to look at each other.

After he'd worked his careful way through his second biscuit, Harry burst out, "It was Malfoy's dad, you know."

She stared at him. "What?"

"The one who gave you the diary," he said. "It was him."

"But--how--" Then Ginny thought of the fight in the bookstore, and Mr. Malfoy shoving the Transfiguration book into her hands. _It's the best your father can do for you . . ._ And then she'd found the diary in there later that afternoon. "B-but--why?"

"He was trying to make it look like you did--all of those things--all on your own, just so's he could get at your dad."

Ginny's fists clenched in the bed clothes. "Why that--!"

"Exactly. And they can't prove anything either." 

"Nothing?"

"No." Then Harry brightened. "But I got back at him. I tricked him into freeing his house-elf."

"You didn't!"

"Yeah--it was great. He was furious, but Dobby--that's the house-elf--"

"Yeah--"

"Well, he sort of chucked him down the stairs and told him not to hurt me and Malfoy's dad couldn't do _anything_ but skulk away!"

Ginny clapped. "Brilliant!"

Harry shrugged and blushed a little. "Least I could do. Dobby was--sort of--helping me along all year."

Another silence fell, this one a little more comfortable. Ginny wiggled her toes and watched the blanket bounce. Then something horrible occurred to her.

"H-Harry--"

"Yeah?" He was eating his third biscuit.

Ginny took a deep breath. "What did Tom say? About me?"

Harry looked up, his eyes sharp behind his glasses. "What d'you mean?"

"Did he--" Ginny could feel her ears burning at the memory of some of the soppy things she'd told Tom. "Did he say anything about what I wrote? To him? In the diary?"

Harry chewed slowly and swallowed before he said, "Not much, honestly--a little something about how your brothers teased you--"

She watched him anxiously. "That was it?"

He tucked the rest of his biscuit into his mouth and said indistinctly, "Myeh."

Madam Pomfrey swept over. "All right, now, time's up--"

"Just one more minute?" Ginny pleaded.

"Please, another minute, Madam Pomfrey," Harry exclaimed at the same time.

"Potter, I really must _insist_-- After all, Miss Weasley needs her rest, with all the visitors and the revelry she's had today--"

Harry left, waving good-bye over his shoulder. Ginny waved back until he went through the infirmary door.

She drew her knees up and rested her chin on them, absently eating another biscuit.

What a strange twenty-four hours it had been. She'd awoken in the Chamber of Secrets, convinced that when everyone knew, they would hate her and reject her. Instead, she'd met with nothing but forgiveness. Every time she thought of it, the boisterous affection of her brothers and her friends wrapped around her like the blankets on her bed.

And Harry . . . even Harry who'd had to go all the way down into the Chamber of Secrets to save her . . . even he didn't hate her.

Which only went to prove, she thought, how very wrong Tom had been about everything.

Madam Pomfrey bustled back. "Miss Weasley, put those away. It's time for you to rest. You've been through a great deal--" She swished the curtains closed, muttering to herself. "It's like this every time one of you lot's in here, every other infernal redhead in the place has to visit you with chess games and legs of lamb and I don't know what all--"

Ginny stuffed the last biscuit in her mouth and snuggled down under her covers. When she drifted off to sleep, there was a euphoric smile on her face.


	14. GinnyGinnyWeeOne

  


Ginny-Ginny-Wee-One

  


She dreamt of a cold-hearted boy with green eyes that he shouldn't have, of snakes, of slime and darkness and evil, of glittering betrayal, hard and cold as diamonds.

She dreamt of a flashing silver sword, light glinting off the lenses of crooked glasses, a fang sinking deep into her chest and hot poison killing her from the inside out . . .

Her eyes snapped open.

Safe. Oh, safe. Just a dream.

No nightmares here.

The infirmary was filled with delicate morning light. She was warm, and the blankets were soft, and she was utterly happy. For a moment, she couldn't remember why, and then she saw the tin of biscuits on her bedside table, and it all came flooding back. With a happy sigh, she settled down into her nest of blankets, glorying in their cosiness.

"So, Miss Weasley."

She jerked into a sitting position and whirled around to stare at the headmaster.

He smiled at her wide eyes and nodded toward the biscuits. "Finally convinced you're not alone in the world?"

Mute with amazement, she nodded. This was the closest she'd ever been to Professor Dumbledore, not counting two nights before, and the first time alone.

"Madam Pomfrey was quite reluctant to let me visit. It seems you had near-constant company yesterday."

"My brothers," she managed.

"And friends."

"Yes."

"You had a great many people grieving for you, and even worried when they knew you were alive again. More, I'll wager, than you would have ever thought during this year. Professor McGonagall tells me you have always kept to yourself. And I think I can guess why."

"Because I was _stupid_," she said bitterly, forgetting her awe for a moment.

The headmaster sighed. "Miss Weasley . . . I knew Tom Riddle a long time ago. I'm sure his methods haven't changed any. He would have played on your weaknesses, those feelings of homesickness, of alienation, of loneliness, and manipulated you toward his own ends. In doing so, he amplified those feelings, which then bound you to him even tighter."

"Yes, sir," she said dully. She understood, now, how Tom had manipulated and coaxed her into believing and behaving just as he wanted her too. But it didn't help her any.

"You know, you're really no different than the vast majority of first-year students, Miss Weasley. You all came here a bit frightened, missing your families, a bit uncertain about yourselves. That's a terribly vulnerable time for anybody. It's all too easy to get mixed up with people who do you more harm than good."

"But nobody else got posessed and went round trying to kill people, did they?" she said miserably.

"No. I'm afraid that was simply your bad luck. But--" he leaned forward to emphasize his point. "--it was not your fault. You were as much a victim in all this as Mr. Creevey or Miss Granger."

She looked away and stared at her tin of biscuits, blinking until it wavered back into focus. 

"Professor Dumbledore? I--I have a question."

"Don't be afraid to ask, Miss Weasley. Even painful truth is better than ignorance."

She lifted her eyes. "Tom said--Riddle said--that he did all those things--because--_I _wanted to. He attacked Mrs. Norris because she scratched me, and C-Colin because I was annoyed with him, and Justin Finch-Fletchley because of what happened at the Dueling Club, and--and--it's not true, is it? He wasn't right, was he? Please--sir--" She stumbled to a halt, because Dumbledore's face was solemn. "Sir?"

"In a way, he was right."

Tears swam in her eyes. "Oh--"

He lifted a hand. "Miss Weasley--what did I tell you just a moment ago about Tom Riddle?"

"He--played on my weaknesses," she said wretchedly. 

"Precisely. Everyone has thoughts like the ones you've described. When someone is hurt or angered or annoyed, their automatic reaction is to wish some sort of vengeance on the person who has done it to them. Tom merely exploited that wrathful energy and used it for his own ends . . . something he has always been very skilled at, I am afraid."

"Everyone--sir?"

"Everyone."

"Surely not you, sir." Ginny couldn't imagine the kindly, forgiving headmaster ever wanting anyone to suffer.

"Miss Weasley, do you recall the manner of Harry and your brother Ron's arrival at the beginning of the year?"

"Dad's car . . . ?"

"You know, of course, that I think very highly of Harry."

"Yes, sir."

"And the last thing I would ever want is for him to be hurt needlessly."

"Yes, sir."

"When I heard what he and Ron had done, I wanted to strangle him."

In spite of herself, a watery giggle popped out of Ginny's mouth. "But--sir--I heard you didn't shout or anything! Ron said--"

"Because I was able to control myself."

Ginny sobered. "That's what I should have done, then?"

"You're not listening. You did control yourself. What Tom did was take those destructive thoughts after you'd battled them back and let them out. He may have chosen his victims because of your feelings, but he was the one who Petrified them."

"But I still--"

"Everyone has a dark side. It--"

She broke in. "_He _said that too. He said mine was just stronger than most."

"Not at all, Miss Weasley," the headmaster said forcefully. "That darkness--it's part of being human. Part of growing up, I'm afraid, is understanding what to do with it."

She studied him, and thought about that. Finally, she nodded.

He smiled. "It won't be easy, but what you need do now is to put it behind you. That does not mean pretending it didn't happen, mind you. Just remember that you have friends and family who will always listen if you have something to say. Don't keep it locked inside anymore."

"I won't," she promised. "Every time I tell someone about it, I feel better. It's like I'm letting something out."

"Exactly." He got to his feet. "Madam Pomfrey tells me you're to be allowed out of the infirmary today. I'm sure you're ready to go."

"Yes, sir!" She winced at how loud that had been, and looked around to check that the nurse wasn't around to hear Ginny casting aspersions on her infirmary. 

Professor Dumbledore laughed. "I shall leave you now. I hope the remainder of your term, such as it is, will be better than it has been, although that shouldn't be hard."

"No, sir." As he turned to go, she remembered something. "Professor!"

He looked back. "Yes?"

She fumbled in her bedside table and found what she'd been looking for. "Professor," she said, holding out the golden feather. "Your bird left this in my hand. Do you want it back?" She hoped he didn't. She loved to look at it, the shining gold and the feathery softness so at odds with each other. But it was his, sort of.

He stared at it for several seconds, taken aback for the first time she'd ever seen. "Fawkes--gave you that?"

"I don't s'pose he actually gave it to me--I mean, he took off flying and--"

"Fawkes doesn't molt like other birds. When he gives out a feather, it's for a reason." He studied it and her for several seconds. It looked as if he were thinking hard. Suddenly, he smiled. "Keep it."

"D'you mean it?"

"It's yours. Do with it as you like."

She clutched it to her heart. "Thank you!"

"It's not mine to bestow, it's Fawkes'. And he's already done that."

She put it back in her bedside table as carefully as a treasure.

"And now, I think it's time for your breakfast. If you'll excuse me--"

"Of course. Thank you, Professor. Not just for the feather, but everything."

"You're exceedingly welcome, my dear."

As he turned away, she heard the faintest edge of a murmur. "I can take a hint, old friend."

  


* * *

  


With no exams, no Professor Lockhart, and best of all, no Tom, the last few days of Ginny's first year were practically perfect. There wasn't one single rainy day. She was with her friends almost from dawn to dusk, and her brothers were going out of their way to pay affectionate, if brotherly, attention to her. She felt as light as a bird, set free from a dense iron cage.

In spite of how happy she was at Hogwarts now, she also couldn't wait to get home. Her parents had had to go the morning after her resurrection from the Chamber of Secrets, and she wanted more than anything to hug them again, and go sit in her tiny room with the soft toys on the shelves, and play Quidditch Champions of the World in the orchard with her brothers. After a whole year of trying as hard as she could to grow up, she felt as if she needed to be a little girl again, at least for a little while.

On the last day of term, she woke up uncharacteristically early. When she couldn't get back to sleep, she went and sat on the window-seat, watching the pale pink light of sunrise creep over the castle and the grounds, shimmering off the still surface of the lake and chasing away the dark shadows at the edges of the Forbidden Forest. So many horrible things had happened to her this year, but so many wonderful things as well. Strange how the two were so bound together.

"Better luck next year, eh?" she murmured, and smiled.

  


* * *

  


Several hours later, she and Carmen were huffing and puffing as they tried to lever Carmen's trunk into the compartment they'd picked. "What'd--you--pack?" Ginny wheezed.

"Every--thing," Carmen groaned. "Ouch!" She'd bumped her elbow on the door of the compartment.

Jeremy and Colin, their things already loaded in, were arguing amiably about Quidditch. "The Cannons! You madman--look, I know you're new to this, but at least pick a better team--"

"A--little _help_--here," Ginny said pointedly.

Jeremy looked over at them, red-faced and sweating. "You've got it," he said, and went back to extolling the virtues of the Ballycastle Bats.

"Boys!" Carmen groaned, and made sure to step on his foot as they staggered past.

When Carmen's trunk finally sat atop the racks, Ginny collapsed in her seat by the window and panted for several minutes. When she got her breath back, Jeremy and Colin were still at it, with Carmen interjecting praise of the Wimbourne Wasps whenever she could get a word in edgewise. Ginny was just considering whether to even the odds and boost up Ron's favorite team when she saw him out the window, at the front end of his beaten-up trunk.

He grinned at her, crossed his eyes, and stuck out his tongue. She plastered her face against the glass, squashing her nose, chin, and forehead, and blew out her cheeks like a puffer fish. Then she focused again so she could see the look on Ron's face, and realized that the puzzled green eyes she was staring into were definitely _not_ her brother's.

With a squawk, she leapt backward away from the window and slid down in her seat, her face burning as she worked it out. Harry had been at the back end of the trunk, and Ron had simply kept walking, knowing exactly what she was going to do.

Carmen broke off arguing and looked at her. "What was that all about?"

"I'm going to kill Ron," Ginny said, and told them.

Jeremy almost fell off the seat laughing, and she threw a slightly squashed Chocolate Frog at his head. "Thanks a lot!"

"Oh, come on," he said. "He's just like us. He's nothing special. I don't see why you get so weird about him."

Ginny's mouth dropped open. "Nothing special?"

"You said yourself he was just ordinary," Colin put in. "You said he hated broccoli, even." This was apparently the height of normalcy, for Colin.

Ginny thought about that. Well, all right. Harry wasn't really a knight in shining armor, the way she'd imagined him. But he was real, and somehow that made him even more special. He did all the brave things he did _for real._ She said, "I know. He is just normal. But there's--something more about him. And it's those things together that make him _him_ and I . . . I'm babbling, aren't I?"

Her friends nodded. 

Out the window, the twins ambled past, each carrying a trunk on their shoulders. They grinned at her, and George shifted one hand to wave. The weight of the trunk overbalanced him, and he staggered dramatically for a second, then straightened up, his face telegraphing _Ta-da!_

They all laughed. "Your brothers," Colin declared, "are really cool."

"I like them," she said.

"Didn't used to be that way," Carmen said.

"Oh well, you know . . ." Reaching a sudden decision, she got up.

"Where're you going?" Jeremy asked.

"I think I'm going to sit with my brothers for the ride home. I've been so beastly to them all year, and they really were worried about me--"

"And it makes no nevermind to you that Harry Potter's sitting with Ron, does it now?" Jeremy said slyly.

Ginny put her nose in the air. "Certainly not!" But she winked at Carmen, who covered her mouth to stifle her own laughter.

  


* * *

  


Waiting outside with Hermione for all her brothers and Harry to change out of their robes and into Muggle clothing before they pulled into Kings' Cross, Ginny decided she'd behaved herself very well. She hadn't blushed or giggled or even gone mute once since settling into her seat. Maybe--maybe she was over him?

The compartment door opened, and Harry stuck his head out, giving them a grin. His hair was wilder than ever from having a shirt pulled over it, and she almost reached out to smooth it down. "Safe now, you can come in . . ."

No, she wasn't.

But she'd stop being so _obvious_ about it all the time, she vowed, ducking back into the compartment. No more valentines, no more swooning and mooning. If she couldn't get over it--and to be honest, she didn't really want to--she was just going to keep it to herself and stop troubling him.

"Ginny," Harry said suddenly, startling her, "what did you see Percy doing, that he didn't want you to tell anyone?"

"Oh, that," said Ginny, giggling. She had to; it was too funny. "Well--Percy's got a _girlfriend_." 

Jaws dropped all around the compartment, and Fred fumbled a whole stack of books, accidentally dumping them on George's head. _"What?"_

"It's that Ravenclaw prefect, Penelope Clearwater," Ginny explained, grinning broadly. It was so nice to be the one giving out information. "That's who he was writing to all last summer. He's been meeting her all over the school in secret. I walked in on them kissing in an empty classroom one day. He was so upset when she was--you know--attacked." She had a momentary attack of conscience--after all, Percy had looked after her practically the entire year, and this was a fine way to pay him back. "You won't tease him, will you?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," said Fred, picking up the books with a wide, evil grin on his face.

"Definitely not," said George, who was snickering madly.

  


* * *

  


They did, of course, and Percy gave her dark looks, but she told him, "It would have come out sooner or later. If you're going to be a Weasley, Percy, you'll have to take some of this teasing."

Percy almost laughed at that. They were on the train to the pyramids, and she and Percy were playing chess. "That's a different tone you're taking, Ginny," he said, moving his pawn.

She watched her bishop knock that pawn over before answering. "Well--I suppose horrible brothers are better than no brothers. Your move."

"Hmmm . . ." 

He made the safest move he could, and she shook her head. Caution was all very well and good, but not in this game. She moved her queen. "Checkmate."

"What!" said Percy.

Ron, who had sitting by, waiting for Percy to lose so he could play, laughed at him. "Come on now, Miss General," he told Ginny, "set up. I want to beat you before we get there."

Ginny obediently set up. "I'm black," she announced.

Ron didn't so much as blink. "All right."

All her brothers had been making a special effort to be nice to her lately, as if to prove to her that they really did love her--but she didn't need it. That first day after her return from the Chamber of Secrets had been enough to prove that a hundred times over.

  


* * * 

  


Of course, she thought darkly a few hours later, there were times when her brothers' new solicitousness got on her nerves.

"I don't think you should go in there, Ginny," Percy said stuffily. "It's really quite--"

"Bloody fan_tas_tic," Fred was saying as he and George came out of the inner chamber of the pyramid they stood in. "Did you notice the--"

Percy gave a sharp cough, and George looked round to see his folded arms and Ginny's stubborn expression. Comprehension flashed in his face, and he jumped into the flow of Fred's gushing.

"Headless mummies--y'know, Fred, wish I hadn't gone in now I've seen it--"

Fred goggled. "What? They were--" George jabbed him hard in the ribs and darted his eyes towards Ginny. Fred hesitated, then switched tacks with lightning speed. "--scary, really scary, I really think I'm going to have nightmares now--"

Ginny snorted loudly. Fred hadn't had a nightmare for ten years at least.

"Let's go somewhere else," he continued. "Oy, Ginny, y'want to see the princess's tomb? We're going there next."

George picked up the flow easily, although it was clearly news to him. "Oh yeah, it's dead wicked, she's got all sorts of--of--" he fumbled for something that would seem dead wicked to Ginny, "--jewelry and things--"

Ginny looked at the three of them, ranged in front of the vizier's tomb like a red-topped wall, and rolled her eyes. She might as well give up for the moment. Later on, she'd see about sneaking into that tomb and seeing those headless mummies they were going on about.

"All right," she said, seeds of sisterly revenge poking their first tendrils out. "Let's go see all this jewelry, shall we? I just _love_ jewelry . . . how about clothes? Any of her clothes still there?"

The twins gave each other dismayed looks.

"Don't forget," Percy shouted after them. "Mum wants a picture before we leave!"

  


* * *

  


Ginny took her copy of the picture down from her wall and smiled at it. She'd liked that trip. Her brothers had spoiled her rotten.

She put it in the pocket on the side of her new trunk. Her old one had rather spectacularly given up the ghost just after their return from Egypt, and her mum had found her a great new one, with all sorts of little hidey-holes and secret panels. Fred and George had broken into it three times this summer at least, and they hadn't found a single thing.

She was grimacing at the socks that Fred and George had included in their first-ever load of laundry, when there was a knock at her door. "Come in," she called out.

At the door, her mum said, "I've got robes for you." She looked at the pink socks. "Don't pack those, dear, I've got to Bleach-Charm them for about three days. I told them not to put that red shirt in."

Ginny laughed and traded socks for robes. "Thanks, Mum." She started packing them.

"Not like that, fold them in three."

"Muuuuuuum--" But she folded them again, to make her mother happy.

Her mother nodded and looked across the room at the dusty shelf of soft toys. "Are you taking Sparkle with you?" she asked.

Ginny's hands stilled in the robes. "I didn't last year."

"I think he missed you last year."

She stared out the window, at the leaves on the old oak tree that had stood outside her bedroom window as long as she could remember. "I missed him too." She made up her mind and turned around quickly. "Can you give him here, Mum? I think I've got room."

Her mother took the unicorn down from the shelf and tenderly brushed dust out of his fur. He'd been white once, but love had turned him a blotchy grey a long time ago. "Do you want me to patch up his horn? He's losing stuffing."

"I'll do it." Ginny hugged him briefly before setting him next to her trunk, to be packed on top. She went on folding the robes, expecting her mother to leave.

Instead, her mother said, "I have something else to give you."

Ginny looked over her shoulder, puzzled. "What, Mum?"

Her mother took a small blue book out of her robes and set it down on her desk. "That."

Ginny froze in the act of folding more socks together. "Mum--"

"It's a diary."

She shut her eyes. "Mum, no, Mummy."

Her mother's voice echoed in the darkness inside her head. "I thought you should have one."

"I don't want a diary," Ginny said in a hollow whisper. "That's what got me in trouble last time."

"It's completely unenchanted. Your dad got it at a Muggle shop the other day--you know, when he came home in such a good mood. You can put anything on it you like, but there's nothing there right now."

"Mummy--"

"The only person you'd be talking to would be yourself."

Ginny opened her eyes.

Her mother wasn't looking at her. She was contemplating the diary. "You don't have to take it if you don't want it. But I think you should."

Ginny stared at it, too.

"Just think about it." Her mother left, closing the door behind her.

Ginny sank down on her bed, on top of the pile of brand-new bras that she'd been so proud of, and stared at the diary for several minutes.

_The only person you'd be talking to would be yourself._

She'd missed writing in a diary. She'd pushed that feeling away, telling herself fiercely not to be silly, but the truth was she did need an outlet. That was why she'd taken to Tom in the first place. Writing to her friends just wasn't the same. She couldn't tell them _everything_.

Slowly, she opened a panel in her trunk and looked at the softly glowing phoenix feather that rested there. It was like a good-luck charm, a promise. Charlie had made it into a quill for her during the Egypt trip, but she'd never written with it. Somehow, she didn't know what deserved to be written by such a talisman.

She took it out and held it in her hand for a moment. It felt almost heavier than a normal quill, as if it really were made of gold.

Maybe she needed that good luck right now.

She took the two steps to her desk, took out a bottle of ink, and opened the diary. For several seconds, she looked down at the blank pages. Scenes from a living nightmare flashed and flickered before her eyes, and she shook her head hard. They scattered like rats from a strong light, darting into the shadows.

She dipped the phoenix-feather quill into the ink and wrote, _My name is Virginia Myrtle Weasley. Mostly called Ginny. And sometimes Ginny-Ginny-Wee-One, but only by special people._

She paused for a moment. The ink didn't sink in, but stayed on the page, the shine dulling as it dried. She smiled and dipped her quill again.

__

This is MY diary.


	15. Epilogue: Dumbledore

  


Epilogue - Dumbledore

  
__

2 years later

"Remember Cedric. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory."

Ginny drank a third time, her eyes wet with tears.

"I can't believe it," Carmen whispered. "It's like a nightmare."

Jeremy's eyes were red, and he kept swiping at his nose. "Cedric was a mate of my brother's," he said thickly. "He was--always really nice to me when he came over--let me ride his broomstick and all--"

Ginny put her arm around him, and for once he didn't pull away. "We've got Dumbledore on our side," she whispered fiercely. "And Harry. Those are really good odds."

He said sharply, "Come off it, Gin, Harry's just a kid like us. I know you're still obsessed with him and all, but--"

"No! I heard what happened from Ron. He didn't just sneak out while You-Know-Who's back was turned. They had a duel, an honestly wizard duel, and their wands did something funny and then Harry was able to get away. He was hurt, and weak, and he still brought Cedric's body back. Could you have done that?"

The other two shook their heads, wide-eyed.

Ginny said in a low, intense voice, "I know he's just fourteen--I know he's not a fantastically skilled wizard--I know he's just human like us. But I also know he's _Harry_, and if anyone can beat Lord Voldemort--"

Carmen clapped her hands to her mouth. _"Ginny!"_

"He says the name, and I will too. It's just a name. If anyone can beat him, Harry can. I believe in him." Ginny said it a second time, her voice a diamond-hard whisper. "_I believe in him."_

It was after the feast had made its sad closing, and everyone was slowly filing out, that Professor Dumbledore made his way over to the Gryffindor table. "Miss Weasley," he said. "May I have a private word with you, please?"

Ginny gulped and snuck a look at Carmen and Jeremy. They both gave her wide-eyed looks. "Y-yes, Professor?"

"Miss Weasley," he said, leading her a little way away from most of the crowd. "I need not ask if you recall the affair of the Chamber of Secrets."

She gulped again. "No, Professor," she said. "Or--yes--I-I do recall." She didn't like to think about it, ever.

"From what Harry told me after it was done with, Tom Riddle was able to do the things he did because he took some of your vital self from you."

She stared at the floor. "Yes, Professor."

"And when he came out of the diary, you fell into a coma-like state, because he was using so much of that vitality that there was very little left for you."

"Yes, Professor." It was only a whisper now.

"And when Harry destroyed the diary, all of that went back into you. _All_ of it, Miss Weasley."

For a moment, she couldn't think what he meant, and then she gave a great gasp, her eyes flying up to meet his. "Y-you mean--there's still some of--_Tom_--still in me? Somewhere?"

"That may very well be the case, Miss Weasley."

She covered her mouth with her hands. For a moment, she thought she was going to be sick. "Can't--can't you _do_ something?" she pleaded. "I don't _want_ him there, Professor--"

"Even if I could, I would not. You see, there is a little bit of Tom Riddle still somewhere inside Lord Voldemort--oh--deep inside. The very core, you might say. If your corresponding piece of Tom, hiding inside _you_, gives us even a small advantage over him . . . we need that advantage, Miss Weasley."

Ginny took a sobbing breath. "But I don't understand _how--_"

"I must confess, nor do I. But if you begin having odd dreams--or you seem to know things that will happen, before they do--"

"But I'm no good at Divination, Professor--"

"In this case, you might be. At the first sign of anything odd, I ask you to contact me straight away. I've sent a letter to your parents with the same request."

She put her face in her hands again. "I--I--"

His hand settled on her shoulder, warm and comforting. "I realize it is a great deal to ask of you. Under normal circumstances, I shouldn't even dream of it. But we are entering dark times, Miss Weasley, and before they are over, many will be asked to do far worse things. Young Harry for instance."

She looked up at that. Harry had already been through so much . . . but she'd seen his face during Dumbledore's speech, set and white. He was ready to do anything that was asked of him. How could she do less?

Her shoulders straightened. "Y-yes, Professor. I understand."

"Very well."

He smiled on her. "You are a Gryffindor, and a Weasley--a formidable combination. Even if you were untested, I would have complete faith in you, Miss Weasley. But you _have_ been tested, and have come through as strongly as you could. My faith is thus that much stronger. Thank you."

She nodded, jerkily.

"It may well come to nothing, after all. It was only a theory of mine. However, if something does come of it, you must be strong." He paused, as if searching for words. To Ginny, he looked old all of a sudden, frail bones and translucent papery skin. It shook her, this reminder of his mortality. 

"I realize how much it may take for you to face these demons for our sake," he said at last.

Old, frail, translucent . . . but there was still a core of iron, and when she met his eyes it glinted at her. 

"For Harry's sake, Professor," Ginny said quietly. 

He was silent, peering at her. Whatever he saw there, it seemed to satisfy him. "For Harry's sake."

FINIS


End file.
